The Age of Leviathan
by Wistful Future
Summary: Several years after Deepground, a new city on the continent of Wutai clashes with the ancient capital in a dispute that escalates into civil war. At first refusing to be involved, Yuffie escapes Wutai only to find herself on a journey to discover that she is her country's last hope.
1. The New City

Most of the characters and places (you know which ones) belong to Square Enix. Other characters and places are my own invention. Some elements of the story, such as places, cultural practices, foods, and mythology, are inspired by real-life counterparts. Any resemblance between the story's events and real-life events, however, is coincidental. In no way is the story an allegory for any real-world country.

* * *

 _Long, long ago, there existed no one and nothing but Tianhou, the Empress of Heaven. The universe was dark and empty._

 _In the midst of this darkness and emptiness, Tianhou created the sun. The sky became full of light and warmth. Then Tianhou created the moon and the stars in their celestial array, to light the sky in turn with the sun. Thus were the day and the night created, and the flow of time first began its course._

 _Tianhou saw that though the sky was full of light, the earth remained dark and empty. She filled the void with fire and rock, and thus were the first volcanoes created. From those volcanoes, rivers of fire flowed and cooled to become the hard rock of the earth's surface. Thus did the land take shape and fill the emptiness of the earth._

 _Tianhou had expended much of her strength and retreated to a chamber deep under the earth to rest. In her dreams, she saw two gods: Da-chao, a four-armed man with a crown upon his head; and Leviathan, a serpentine dragon with shimmering turquoise scales. And as Tianhou dreamt, the two gods came into being._

 _The gods knew that Tianhou had called them into being and that she had left them the vast, mountainous landscape to guard and cultivate. But they quarreled over how much each of them was to rule. In their argument, Leviathan, the Water God, caused a fearsome storm that quenched the fire of the volcanoes and covered the entire land with a vast ocean. Thus he claimed all for his domain. But Da-chao, the Earth God, raised the mountains from the seabed and broke the surface of the water. Thus he preserved the land that Tianhou created and that Leviathan tried to destroy._

 _Then Tianhou, still dreaming deep inside the earth, dreamt of life. Seeds sprouted and bloomed upon the land. Animals roamed the sea, the land, and the sky. And finally, Tianhou dreamt of our ancestors, the first humans. They roamed the mountainous land, hunting for their food and taking shelter in caves. And when they reached the eastern cliffs where daily the sun makes its ascent from the sea, they met Leviathan._

 _The Water God sought to test our ancestors in battle. He swore an oath that if they could prove their strength, he would seal himself away and allow them to call on him in need. Our people struggled against the god, whose power was great. After many days and nights of training and meditation, the first_ feng shui _warrior, Jidan, proved his strength by bending nature to his will. With his mastery of all creation, achieved at the cost of his life, he at last proved our ancestors worthy of Leviathan's protection. True to his word, the god sealed himself away._

 _Weary from their battle and their constant travels, our people journeyed north in search of a place to settle. At the end of the mountain pass, they found a great river valley. They followed the river into a forest at the foot of the mountains, where they met the Earth God, Da-chao. Jidan's wife Huoda used the same technique that took her husband's life to master all creation and secure the god's protection. He, too, sealed himself away to be called upon in need._

 _There, where they received the blessing of the Earth God, our people laid the foundations for our city. It is there at the Place of the Earth God's Repose that the Pavilion of Heavenly Harmony, the Pagoda of Martial Glory, and the Palace of Earthly Peace stand to this day. This is where our history began. This was the beginning of Wutai._

 _For many years now, our people have flourished under the blessings of the two gods Da-chao and Leviathan. But some say that these blessed days will not last forever. According to an ancient legend, one day the vengeance of Leviathan will outweigh the oath he swore to our people. On that day, they say, the god will wrap his serpentine body around the land and drag it into the depths of the ocean. Thus he will reclaim the kingdom Da-chao stole from him, and reign supreme over the world._

* * *

From the airship, the city burst with light against the darkness of night. To the east was the clear boundary between the city lights and the waters of the South Sea; to the north were scattered points of light at the city's construction sites. Month by month, these construction sites crept northward, transforming the rocky peninsula into cityscape.

This was not the city of Wutai, but the city of Longhua. Yuffie raced to the railing and leaned over, captivated by the sight. "Look at it! Think it'll reach the mountains next time we come back?" She turned to her friends Yvonne and Wade, who laughed at her. "What's so funny?" she demanded.

"You always get so excited every time we come back," Yvonne said.

"You can't blame her," Wade remarked to her. "Look at what she has to come home to."

Yuffie bristled. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked indignantly, but she knew what they meant. Every year it became more and more embarrassing to compare the old city of Wutai and the new city of Longhua. Until very recently, Longhua was just a small fishing town by the southern bay of the Wutaian continent. A new leader by the name of Takuji Minazuki turned the town on its head. Disregarding the old prejudice against foreign businesses, Minazuki brought them to Wutai by the dozens. Almost overnight, the small fishing town transformed into a modern port city of glass, concrete, and steel. The old huts and narrow, rambling dirt paths gave way to high-rises and grids of wide asphalt roads.

The rapidly growing city quickly replaced the village of Youguo, east of the capital, as the country's busiest port. The WRO even set up a base in Longhua to recruit more Wutaian members. Yvonne and Wade were among the first recruits. There were now enough Wutaian members that the WRO sent them home by airship direct from headquarters twice a year: once in winter for the Wutaian New Year and once for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Yuffie would usually spend some time with her friends in Longhua before making the journey north to visit her father.

"Wutai's cool too," Yvonne said in response to Wade.

"You're only sayin' that 'cause you grew up there, Yinying," Yuffie accused her. She called Yvonne by her Wutaian name to tease her. They knew each other from their ninjutsu training when they were children. Back then, Yvonne had a competitive streak and was always trying to prove she was better than Yuffie. Shortly after she moved to Longhua, she became one of Yuffie's first recruits to the WRO. Soon after that, they became friends, even as Yvonne became popular among the men of the WRO because of her dark blue eyes.

"So where are we going tonight?" Wade asked.

"My friend told me there's a new wine bar called the Global Lounge," Yvonne supplied.

Wade turned to Yuffie. "Better be careful. Remember what happened last time with the Tranquilizer-"

"I know, I know! You don't have to remind me," Yuffie snapped. Ever since they started visiting bars immediately after returning to Longhua, Yuffie, not wanting to miss out, began taking Tranquilizers to fend off her airsickness. Last time, something went wrong. It was something about the mixture of Tranquilizers and alcohol. In any case, she ended up in the hospital. It was a trip she didn't want to repeat.

The airship descended into the WRO base's dark airfield amid the bright city lights, and the passengers disembarked to board the bus that would bring them to Shoreline Plaza, a common meeting point in the city. Yuffie, Yvonne, and Wade disembarked from the bus and began walking down Seaward Boulevard, the wide road in the center of the city. On its east end, the boulevard intersected with the city's other major street, Bayshore Drive, which ran along the coastline of the bay. Past its intersection with Bayshore Drive, Seaward Boulevard became a pedestrian boardwalk terminating in a plaza with a giant statue of Leviathan. The statue was made of a brilliant metallic turquoise that flashed in the sun by day and the floodlights that illuminated it by night, so that there was no escaping from its ferocious snarl.

As Yuffie, Yvonne, and Wade walked down the brightly lit sidewalks of Seaward Boulevard, the whirring of engines filled the air, occasionally drowning out the chatter. Everywhere there was motion: the cars whizzing by on the street, the people walking briskly to keep warm in the breezy chill of the winter evening, the flashing electronic displays advertising the latest imported goods. All of it made Yuffie smile every time she came back to Longhua. The city made her heart beat faster, as if to keep up with the brisk pace of life in Longhua. Something about the city promised excitement, promised there was always something new to discover – like this new wine bar in the newly constructed neighborhood in the north.

The Global Lounge, true to its name, boasted wines from all over the world. "Except for Wutai," Yvonne commented as they perused the menu. She had to raise her voice to be heard. The lounge was packed.

"You want your rice wine, you go to Wutai," said Yuffie, referring to the city. "Ain't no better place to get it!"

They were joined by two of Wade's friends, Naoki and Jenshi, who lived and worked in Longhua. They went by the names Nick and Jen. "So what's new?" Wade asked after they all received their drinks.

Jen proudly announced that she and her friends were renting a house in a newly constructed suburban neighborhood on the cliffs overlooking the sea. "There's a party later tonight. You guys should come!"

"What's the occasion?" Yvonne asked.

Jen shrugged. "Housewarming? I don't know. Do we need an occasion?" She laughed.

"There's not much to celebrate these days," Nick commented pointedly.

Silence followed his comment. Nick gave a cough that sounded like, "Ask me why."

After another short silence, Yvonne asked, "Why?"

"Minazuki had a meeting with Lord Godo a few weeks ago," Nick reported, naming Longhua's leader. "The word is, it didn't go so well."

"What was the meeting about?"

"You've heard that South Lake is drying up, right?"

Wade's eyes widened. "No way. That's where we get our water."

Yuffie had never seen the lake, but it and its surrounding gardens were Longhua's main attractions when the city was still just a fishing town. Back then, when people went to Longhua, it was usually to see South Lake. Its natural beauty featured in many of the paintings back home in the Palace.

Nick continued, "Minazuki's trying to convince Lord Godo to dam the Lotus River. Then we could build a pipeline from Wutai all the way to here."

"And Lord Godo's against it?" Wade asked.

"Yeah. He said something like we shouldn't mess with the river and it doesn't have enough water-"

"Bullshit," Yvonne declared.

Nick shrugged. "No one was surprised. Lord Godo doesn't exactly like us."

"Why not?" Yuffie wanted to know. This was all new to her.

"We built a huge new city on foreign money."

"Wutai runs on foreign money too," Yuffie pointed out.

"I think he means foreign businesses," Yvonne commented. "That's the real issue, isn't it? After what happened with Shinra, Lord Godo thinks inviting foreign businesses to Wutai is a disgrace."

"That doesn't give him the right to deny us water, though," Wade said. "He's the leader of Wutai. It's his job to help us out when we need it."

"You think this could get serious?" Yuffie asked. "Like war-serious?"

The table fell silent. "Hopefully not," Jen finally answered. "Maybe they'll work something out."

"But if worst came to worst," Wade said, looking around the table, "would you fight?"

"Yeah," Jen responded. "I think we should stand up for our hometown. You'd do the same for Wutai, right, Yuffie?"

All eyes fell on Yuffie, who shifted uncomfortably. "I dunno," she said. "Just 'cause I'm from there doesn't mean I'd fight."

"You'd go to war against your dad?" Yvonne asked.

Yuffie flared up. "What's it matter what I do? I'm not a kid anymore, no one can tell me what to do-"

Yvonne laughed. "Even when you were a kid, no one could tell you what to do."

The rest of the table burst into laughter. Yuffie didn't know why she was suddenly so annoyed. She just was.

"Her dad's Lord Godo," Wade explained to Nick and Jen.

They both stared at her, wide-eyed. "Really?" Jen asked. "But your eyes aren't purple."

"Yeah. I get that a lot," Yuffie said. There were two kinds of people: those who said Yuffie's eyes were "Kisaragi violet" and those who said they were dark brown. Yuffie herself didn't know what color her eyes were, much less why she couldn't tell.

"It's nice, isn't it? She can blend in with the rest of us peasants," Yvonne teased.

Yuffie shrugged. "It sucked being a princess anyway. You never get to go anywhere, or do what you wanna do."

The others nodded sympathetically. Yuffie enjoyed the attention. She had long learned that even if she was no longer the Princess of Wutai, she still received the attention of having been a princess in the first place. It was the best of both worlds.

Yvonne raised her glass. "At the risk of sounding super Western, let's have a toast to freedom."

They all laughed and raised their glasses in a toast. After they finished their drinks and went outside, Jen reminded them of the party. "When does it start?" Yvonne asked.

Jen checked her phone. "It started a few minutes ago. If we go there now, we'll be right on time."

Nick laughed. "Maybe we need some time. We don't wanna be awkwardly early."

"I have to sit this one out," Yvonne said. "My dad asked me to visit him as soon as I got back."

"Alright. We'll miss you!"

Yvonne waved and set off in the direction of Seaward Boulevard. Jen called someone to drive the four of them to her house, explaining that the lack of sidewalks made it easier to drive than to walk. It was a short ride along the winding road in the cliffs. Yuffie was just starting to get carsick when the car pulled up in front of a house with huge windows overlooking the sea.

Wade gaped. " _This_ is your house?"

Jen grinned proudly. "Yeah!"

Inside, the lights were low, the DJ was pounding out Western hits, and the sticky-sweet smell of beer filled the air. Over the booming bass, Jen's friends and their friends shouted conversations at each other with red plastic cups in their hands. Not long after arriving, Yuffie was only aware of her surroundings in bits and pieces: chatting with a stranger who somehow noticed her violet eyes in the dim light, overhearing Nick point out "the Kisaragi girl" while she was on the dance floor with her stranger, and stifling her laughter while Jen drunkenly made out with someone on the couch. All of it disappeared when she opened her eyes the next morning.

She was under some fuzzy blankets on the couch in the living room. Her phone was purring and chiming loudly on the table nearby. Yuffie closed her eyes and went through the night in her head. If she remembered anything at all, she didn't drink too much.

The clock across the room read 8:35. She was in no mood to get up, but she had to move if she wanted to reach Wutai by midnight. She mustered all the strength she had and rolled off the couch and onto the floor. The blanket still wrapped around her cushioned her fall. Struggling to her feet and wrapping the blankets around her, she hobbled out of the room and into the bathroom. In the mirror she saw a petite Wutaian woman with short, chin-length hair, half-open eyes, a wicked slouch, and several layers of fuzzy gray blankets. Yuffie let the blanket fall to the floor, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water on her face. When she looked in the mirror again, she smirked. With the mischievous look in her eye, she was Yuffie Kisaragi again.

She returned to the foyer of the house, retrieved her black coat, shuriken, and hoverboard, and left the house. Outside, the sky was ominously gray, as if something portentous had happened during the night – or was about to happen. She walked along the side of the road that led to downtown Longhua, flattening herself along the side when cars roared by. Below, the city of steel, glass, and concrete sprawled out along the shore, with the wide Seaward Boulevard marking the center and the Leviathan statue atop the blue-gray waters of the bay. At the southern edge of the city, she could see what the darkness of night had hidden: the factories, the surrounding brown fields, and a large, greenish-brown pond that looked like it used to be a lake.

A boom like thunder from the plain to the north startled her. Just outside the city, beyond the construction zone, were ranks of uniformed people organized into rectangles. _Soldiers?_ she wondered. Not far from them, crews of mechanics were hard at work building large, tower-like machines.

At the bottom of the road, two police officers turned to greet her. "Where are you headed, miss?" one asked.

"Wutai."

"Just keep to your left as you approach the mountain pass and you'll be fine," the other officer said shortly.

Yuffie pointed towards the distant mass of soldiers. "What's going on there?"

"An exercise for the police force," the first one answered.

"And what're those?" She pointed at the machines.

"A new security system," the second officer said.

"It'd probably be more useful on the east side. You know, on the cliffs by the sea, where all the ships come in?"

The two officers looked at one another. Finally, the second officer said, "We are prepared to deal with threats on all sides."

"Threats on all sides, huh?"

Something about that sounded threatening to Yuffie, but instead of wondering why, she dropped her hoverboard to the ground, stepped on, and sped off towards the mountain pass that would take her home.


	2. The Ancient Lands

On the journey to Wutai from Longhua, Yuffie followed the old imperial road leading from Longhua through the rocky shrublands and into the mountain pass. The road passed by Wutai's three major towns, came within sight of villages tucked into the mountains, plunged through the Lotus River valley and the south quarter of the capital, and terminated in the city's central square. This road was the only reason some of Wutai's mountainside villages continued to survive. Other villages farther from the imperial road, like Yuffie's grandmother's village of Puhua Si, were not so fortunate.

The first stretch of the mountain pass ran by the ruins of a temple. There were many of these along the road even before Shinra came, and their number only increased with the outbreak of war. Past these ruins, the imperial road plunged into woodland that was vibrant with color in the fall, but bare in winter. In a large clearing to the left of the road was the provincial capital of Pusa Ding, though it was little more than a village now. After Shinra left the city and its mighty walls in shambles, the residents tried to rebuild. With the entire nation devastated, however, the most they could manage was thatched-roof huts. The village was practically silent when Yuffie stopped by for a quick lunch. While she ate, she wandered to the west end of the village and trained her eyes on the foot of the distant mountains. Somewhere at the base of those mountains was an abandoned village called Shuxiang. It was important to Yuffie's father for some reason. After she finished her lunch, she left as quickly as she came and continued along the imperial road. The prosaically named East Mountain lay in the distance. It was once the site of an imperial palace and several temples, but they were all in ruins now. All in all, the entire province of Pusa Ding was Yuffie's least favorite part of the journey through Wutai. Its ruins reminded her that all the best times to be alive in Wutai were over by the time she was born. It was like going to see an action movie with a sad ending, and only arriving in time to see the sad ending: if it was all going to end badly, it would have been nice to at least see the epic fight scenes – but no, that was all over for Wutai.

In the early afternoon, she passed into the province of Tayuan. First she sped by the ruined village of Guangzong, another victim of Shinra's northward march. Then the imperial road took her past rice fields, the shores of East Lake, the lakeside temple, and the provincial capital of Tayuan, built partially on the lake. Yuffie enjoyed walking across the city with its canals and stone bridges, especially when she came home for the Mid-Autumn Festival. In spring and summer, the city was overrun with tourists who would annoyingly stop in the middle of bridges to take pictures of every canal. During those seasons, the wealthier residents of Tayuan sought refuge in their estates among the bamboo forests of the northern mountains – until even wealthier foreigners began building their own summer houses there.

As the sun set, Yuffie made her way through the province of Xiantong, the most mountainous part of the continent. Out of necessity, the town of Xiantong and its neighboring villages were all close to the main road, but only one, Jile Si, bore the brunt of Shinra's might. Built on a plateau among the peaks, the provincial capital of Xiantong survived, preserving the sweeping, tiled roofs that made it so similar to Wutai. All that was lost was a temple that was so important to Yuffie's father that he visited its ruins every year. When Yuffie stopped by the town for a quick dinner, the residents were just beginning to light the street lanterns, chasing away the swiftly falling darkness of the winter night with flickering golden light. All told, Yuffie thought Xiantong and Tayuan were nice cities, but they were no Longhua.

Finally, after nightfall, Yuffie passed the ruins of the fortress at the end of the mountain pass. Its location guarding the road down to the Lotus River valley made it one of Wutai's most strategic points, which just meant that it was in Shinra's crosshairs when the army blazed its way northward. Past the fortress, the mountains descended into the Lotus River valley. Thanks to the river, most of the valley floor was farmland dotted with villages. Past these fields and villages lay the ancient capital of Wutai, past the city lay the great forest, and past the forest rose the mountains bearing the huge carvings of the earth spirits, Da-chao foremost among them.

Yuffie sped down the mountain and along the ancient paved road through the rice fields. This was once the liveliest stretch of the imperial road. The capital's merchants and their chocobo-driven carts trundled down this road to sell furniture wrought from the finest woods of the forest, intricately engraved lacquerware, jade-colored ceramics, and other fine, handcrafted objects. Eager to receive a sign of favor from the Emperor, village elders jostled against each other on their way to the Palace. Ranks of armored soldiers wielding lances, swords, and guns marched southward on this road to unite the Empire all the way to the South Sea, returning triumphant by this same road – until the humiliating day they returned with Shinra's army at their heels. Then the majestic imperial road became the dusty beaten path of tourists with their cameras and chocobos. These tourists nearly disappeared after Meteorfall and during the outbreak of Geostigma. After the rain that cured the epidemic and the brief scare with Deepground, the flow of tourists swelled and steadied once more. Thankfully, in January, there were few tourists willing to put up with the bitter cold of Wutai's winter even to see the city's New Year celebrations.

The massive walls surrounding the city drew closer. Through the southern gateway shone red paper lanterns lining the main street. Yuffie slowed her hoverboard, jumped off, and picked it up to pass through the gateway on foot. Past the gateway, the ancient stone road plunged, still straight as an arrow, between the ranks of centuries-old wooden buildings and their red lanterns bathing the street in a weak, melancholy glow. All of the shops and restaurants were closed by now, offering only mute, dark fronts to the street. Only the occasional teahouses and _izakayas_ poured faint light and conversation into the street. Few people were outside. Those who were had their chins tucked into their collars and their eyes glued on the ground. It was the coldest time of the year, when anyone who dared to go out did so only out of necessity and avoided all conversation outdoors.

If Wutai were still an empire, Yuffie would still be a princess and everyone in the city would know her face. Instead of ignoring her or giving her an indifferent glance, they would all hurry to greet her. They would address her not by the borderline-polite "Miss Yuffie" but by the humble "Your Imperial Highness, Princess Xi'irh." They would call their families out into the streets to see her and ask her, "How was your stay abroad? What have you been doing? What is the rest of the world doing out there?" She would tell them stories about the big world out there, and they would hang on to all of her tales of her adventures. Then again, if she were still a princess, she probably wouldn't be allowed to leave the city.

The ranks of the tired wooden buildings along the street fell away when she reached the river. The rigidly straight main street crossed the river over a stone bridge before following the gently curved northward course of the river. Chatter floated across the water from a building on the left: Turtle's Paradise, always the liveliest spot in Wutai thanks to its prime location and keen advertising.

Across the river, Yuffie followed the gently curving street to the Place of the Earth God's Repose, known as An-xi Square for short. Once the heart of the Empire, the square was also the geographical center of the city until Shinra dropped the bomb that wiped out city's north and northwest quarters. After entering through the Meridian Gate, visitors beheld the three great monuments: to the west, the Pavilion of Heavenly Harmony and the temple complex behind it; to the north, the Pagoda of Martial Might, the dojo, and the armory; and to the east, the Palace of Earthly Peace. Yuffie walked towards the Palace and, instead of climbing the steps up to the main entrance, went around to a side entrance. The main entrance with its magnificent red gold-studded doors was the tourists' entrance into the Palace.

The Palace was a vast complex of hallways enclosing courtyards and linking rooms. The half closer to the square – the half that included the Emperor's throne – was a museum. Ever since the end of the war, Yuffie and her father had lived in just six of the hundreds of rooms in the half that still belonged to them and didn't know what to do with the rest of it.

Inside, seated in the tatami room, was the man all the tourists hoped to glimpse when they visited the Palace: the last Emperor of Wutai reduced to an ordinary man. A relic of the glorious past, he bore his title of "Lord Godo," the last vestige of his majesty and his regnal name, like the streaks of silver in his hair, as if only half of him lived in the present. After the war, this crumbling statue of a man was all Yuffie knew of her father until she climbed the Pagoda and discovered that somewhere deep beneath the shame and disillusionment, there was a heart that still burned for love of Wutai.

Yuffie leaned her shuriken and hoverboard against the wall, hung up her coat, and kicked off her boots. "Have you been waiting long?" she asked, remembering to switch to Wutaian just in time.

Godo gave a start, as if only now registering her arrival. "You're late," he said. "You said you would be home yesterday."

"I spent the night in Longhua. Like I always do," she added pointedly. "I'm hungry."

On the table in front of her father there was a teapot, two teacups, and a plate of lotus seed buns. Yuffie sat down and grabbed a bun. She washed the first bite down with the tea, or attempted to do so and spluttered when the tea burned her tongue instead.

"Why did you spend the night in Longhua?"

"Bucuz uh huff frezz."

"Friends?" He shook his head. He hadn't looked pleased when Yuffie arrived, but now his anger was evident. "True Wutaians have no friends in Longhua."

"Wow. That was so salty, I can taste it in the bun!"

"What? Is the bun salty?"

"No. You are."

"What are you talking about?"

She forgot the joke didn't work in Wutaian. "Never mind. I heard you had a spat with Minazuki," she said, reaching for another bun.

Godo watched her dip the bun in her tea with a look of disapproval on his face. "Minazuki thinks he is the new Emperor, and Longhua thinks it is the new capital."

She thought of the city's tall, glassy buildings and crowded, brightly lit streets. "Can't blame them."

"Now they want to bring the Lotus River all the way to Longhua. They even brought engineers to tell me they could do it. I told them we cannot. The river is sacred."

"Yeah, but they need water."

"They have a lake."

"It's dirty. That's why they're asking."

"It's their fault!" he retorted. "They polluted South Lake with all those factories and all that careless building. They'll do the same to our river."

"They need water, though. And they'll fight you for it."

Godo looked at her sharply. "Fight?"

"Longhua was training an army just outside the city this morning." The officers she met that morning told her they were police, but she wasn't fooled. Longhua didn't need a police force that large.

Godo shook his head in disgust. "If it's war they want, we'll give them war!"

Yuffie looked at him in alarm. "Why can't you just give them water?"

"They will ruin it! And why are you defending them?"

"I don't think it's fair that you won't help them!"

"If you care so much, then why don't you go and fight for them?" Godo spat.

"Do you _want_ me to? Then fine! Maybe I will!" she shouted back defiantly.

She immediately thought she had spoken too impulsively, but Godo seemed not to have heard her. "I must meet with the Wusheng," he muttered. He looked old and burdened. Something about the sight of her father like this startled Yuffie, bringing to mind some childhood memory trying to be remembered. Godo was on his way out of the room before she could recall it. Over his shoulder, he called, "Don't forget to say hello to your mother."

Yuffie drained her teacup. For the most part, it was just another homecoming: he told her she was late and gave her food, they argued, and he began to storm off before reminding her to say hello to her mother. She didn't know how he always remembered to remind her. She knew for a fact that he hardly visited her mother himself.

Only after she heard the distant sound of Godo's door sliding shut did Yuffie stand up and trudge across the courtyard to her mother's room. She sighed and slid the door open. "Hi, Mom."

Across the room, the bronze statue of Da-chao flashed in the candlelight. To the side lay Yuffie's mother's shrine, a triptych of framed pictures with a long golden hairpin lying in front. The first picture was a painting of a woman with the same heart-shaped face, large eyes, and delicate nose as Yuffie. Her black hair was carefully arranged in a low chignon and held in place with a long wooden hairpin. The second picture was a wedding portrait. In their wedding kimono of scarlet silk with fine golden embroidery, the Emperor and Empress looked calm and contented, but not happy. In the third, largest picture, Yuffie's parents sat next to each other, her mother on the left and her father on the right. Her older brother, Farruo, stood next to their father. Her mother held the wide-eyed baby Yuffie in her lap. Her other brother Kuniyoshi was absent, having died before Yuffie was born.

The sight of her father's face just now had brought back one of Yuffie's few memories of her mother. During the war, Godo came home only once a year. Whenever he left, he looked old and burdened as he did just now. Yuffie once asked her mother why Baba was always gone. Her mother answered that bad people were trying to destroy Wutai. Yuffie's father was fighting them to protect Wutai's people, their way of life, and their honor. That was how Yuffie began to realize that her father was someone important, and that made her important, too – in many good ways, but also in many annoying ways. With the possibility of war with Longhua, she would now be expected to throw her support behind her father, or even to take a leading position in the army, just because she was Lord Godo's daughter. She could almost hear the Wusheng telling her, "This is your duty to your country. You have no choice."

"No choice!" she scoffed aloud. "Who're you to tell me what to do?"

"Who are you talking to?" came Godo's muffled voice from his room.

"No one!"

When she stood up, a sudden chill made her skin tingle. The candles shivered, making the bronze statue of Da-chao flicker in the light. With the dancing shadows on his face, he seemed to be laughing. Yuffie hurried out of the room and closed the door.


	3. Back in Time: A New Scholar-Official

_I look at you and I laugh. We are so similar and yet so different. To prove your independence, you ran away from home. To prove my independence, I ran to the imperial court._

With a rumble, the great doors to the throne room opened. In a rippling sea of silks, the scholar-officials seated on both sides of the room turned. At the end of the room, dressed in a kimono of the finest violet silk, the Fifteenth Kisaragi Emperor sat stiffly on his throne.

Not long ago, Kisaragi Juugodou, or Emperor Godo, was Akitake, the Prince of Autumn Glory. He had been notorious for making his tutors' lives a nightmare and getting into fights with his half-siblings. There was anxiety around the city when the Fourteenth Emperor died and Prince Akitake was named the new Emperor. His defenders claimed that three years of military service in Shuxiang had changed the impetuous young Prince. At any rate, he had to be doing a decent job if the Empire was still standing.

 _He may be Emperor, but he isn't much older than me,_ Kasumi thought as she followed the official towards the throne. _With that clean-shaven face, he still looks like a boy._

They halted at the steps leading up to the Emperor's throne and bowed low. When she raised her head, Kasumi perused the Emperor's face. With his high cheekbones, strong nose, and angular jawline, the Emperor looked every bit the stubborn youth he was rumored to be. Kasumi squinted to see if his eyes were really violet-blue, as the eyes of the Kisaragi family were said to be. She couldn't tell from this distance.

When they reached the steps leading up to the throne, the official preceding Kasumi bowed low. "I present to Your Majesty the newest candidate for the imperial court."

"Where?" the Emperor asked – somewhat rudely, Kasumi thought.

Kasumi bowed. "Here, Your Majesty."

The Emperor was astonished. "You?" He addressed Kasumi's escort. " _She_ passed the civil service examinations?"

"With high marks, Your Majesty."

The Emperor looked around at his court. They were all silent and stone-faced with disapproval for the young woman who, in a breathtaking display of defiance, had not only taken the civil service examinations but also passed with high marks.

Kasumi broke the silence. "Your Majesty, do you find me acceptable as a member of the imperial court?"

"No."

"On what grounds do you object to my presence, Your Majesty?"

"We have not had a female scholar-official in centuries. It is not our custom."

Kasumi, accustomed to hearing this remark, recited her response. "Your Majesty, the imperial court should distinguish between custom and law. Custom excludes women from politics, but no _law_ stops them from entering the imperial court. I might also add that according to the Master's writings, the fundamental concept of the imperial court system is that anyone can rise from the status of a commoner to that of a scholar-official – even a commoner woman like me."

There was a long silence.

"What is your name?" the Emperor finally asked.

"Faruno Kasumi, Your Majesty."

"Faruno? Are you related to Faruno Bito?"

"He is my father, Your Majesty."

There were murmurs around the throne room. Kasumi's father was the Master of Magic, the most powerful _feng shui_ warrior in Wutai other than the Master of the Pagoda himself.

"Did he approve of your efforts to the imperial court?" the Emperor asked.

"Yes, Your Majesty. He paid for my education."

The Emperor, looking disappointed, sighed. "Very well. Faruno, are you prepared to assume the duties and obligations of a scholar-official at the imperial court?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Do you accept the responsibility to act with valor, wisdom, and benevolence?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And do you agree to honor the traditions of the imperial court?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"We accept you, Faruno, as a scholar-official of the imperial court. Your agreement to the vows of the scholar-official has been noted. We and the other scholar-officials will discuss where you are to spend the first three years of your service. We will summon you when we have decided."

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

Kasumi bowed low and began to turn away, but the Emperor signaled for her to stay. He stood, descended the steps, and waited for the conversation in the room to mask his words. Kasumi dared to glance up into his eyes and saw that they were indeed violet-blue. "As Emperor, We command you to speak truthfully," the Emperor said. "Why did you come to the imperial court?"

"To see if I could make it, Your Majesty."

He looked astonished. "Is that your answer?"

"Your Majesty asked me to be honest."

"Men from all over Wutai join the imperial court seeking justice, or knowledge, or honor for their families."

"Most men join the imperial court because their families have enough money to bribe their way in. I just joined to see if a corrupt system would admit an honest woman."

"Are you calling yourself honest?"

"Your Majesty asked me to be honest," Kasumi simply repeated.

The Emperor gazed at Kasumi with hostility in his eyes. "You may have earned the right to enter the imperial court, but We do not guarantee that you will be able to stay."

"Your Majesty, I said nothing about staying, only about entering."

"You are dismissed, Official Faruno."

The next day, the Emperor summoned Kasumi to the court to pronounce her assignment for the next three years. _Longhua,_ Kasumi thought hopefully. She had heard it was a beautiful town. _Or Zunsheng. Somewhere in the south, by the sea._

"We and the senior scholar-officials have carefully considered where your service is most needed at this time, and have decided to place you in Puhua Si."

Kasumi struggled not to show her horror. _Not Puhua. Anywhere but there!_ The Emperor continued, "We understand your mother was from Puhua Si and thought you would prefer to be placed there."

Kasumi glanced at the senior scholar-officials' faces. They barely concealed their glee at the thought of sending this female scholar-official to one of the Empire's most backward villages. This was clearly no kindhearted gesture. They were telling her that she belonged in the poor village where her mother came from. Nevertheless, determined not to give them the satisfaction of her disappointment, Kasumi bowed low. "I accept Your Majesty's assignment and thank you for the careful consideration you have given it."

When she returned home, she complained bitterly to her father, who looked confused at her dismay. "Puhua is a nice little town. I heard it's improved since I was last there. I meant to take you sometime. Now you can see it for yourself."

"I don't want to go. It's too close to Wutai and it's a backward place."

Her father spent the rest of the day trying to convince her that Puhua wasn't the terrible place she thought it was. She was only half-listening while she and her amah packed her belongings for the journey. Early the next morning, her father walked her to the city's eastern gate with her assigned guards. "You will do just fine," he said encouragingly. "Your mother would be proud of you."

His comment echoed in her head as she and her guards set off along the road. _The mother whom everyone says I look like, who died giving me life. The mother I never knew. Will her village tell me more about her? Will I learn more about who I am?_

The sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon. _A journey to the east, where the sun rises,_ Kasumi thought. _I am on a journey to the past._


	4. The Spurned Inheritance

The morning after Yuffie came home, Godo sent a message throughout the city that all ninja were to report to the dojo that evening. Yuffie was informed that this included her.

They gathered inside the dojo's largest room. The Wusheng occupied the five seats along the north side, with Godo in the center. The city's most skilled ninja sat on the floors in rows, staring expectantly at Godo. Yuffie sat in the back. Godo began the meeting by telling them what they all already knew: Longhua, struggling with drought, wanted Wutai to dam the Lotus River and build a pipeline all the way to the southern end of the continent. He then revealed Longhua's preparations for war. A murmur of astonishment ran through the room.

"The Wusheng have met. We have agreed that we must also prepare for war," Godo announced. "But first, I am assigning you all a task. You will travel the world and bring back all the Materia you can find."

"Materia?" asked a woman indignantly. "Why do we need Materia? We fought off Deepground without it."

"Deepground sent one of its weaker divisions to fight us," Staniv responded. "They underestimated our strength and focused their resources in other parts of the world. But Longhua is allied with foreign businesses that will do anything to expand their foothold in Wutai. We are fighting against the latest military technology. As Master of Weapons, I hate to admit it, but only Materia can guarantee us an advantage against Longhua."

"Hardly anyone sells Materia these days," said Chekhov, "but of course there's a black market."

"While you're away, the Wusheng will prepare the rest of the army for war," Gorky told the ninja. "We will wait for you to return before we begin strategic action."

"Longhua could attack any day," said Shake. "Time is of the essence."

"Unless there are any other questions, this meeting is adjourned. Go with Leviathan's protection," Godo concluded, standing.

The other four Masters and the rest of the ninja stood and began filing out of the room in silence. Yuffie glanced at her father, who motioned for her to come to him.

Godo waited for everyone to leave the room before speaking. "You have the most important task," he told her. He knelt down, reached underneath the cushion he had been sitting on, and pulled out a Materia. Yuffie giggled at the thought that her father had been sitting on a Materia this whole time, like a chocobo sitting on an egg. "You know what this Materia is," he said.

She took it from his outstretched hand. It was a deep crimson color, like blood. "The Leviathan Materia."

Since it belonged to Wutai, it was the only Materia that Cloud and the others allowed her to bring back to Wutai other than the Restore Materia. Holding the small, crystalline sphere in her hand, Yuffie remembered how she spent years of her life hunting for Materia for Wutai, and how it all ended when she joined the WRO.

"Do you remember the legend of the two gods' Materia?" Godo asked.

"Nope."

"What about the story of the world's creation?"

"Uh…" She had heard this story many times. "The Empress of Heaven made the world and went to sleep. Leviathan flooded the place, but Da-chao made the land float. Then the Empress of Heaven dreamed about plants and animals and people and they popped out of nowhere."

"That's… one way of telling it," said Godo with obvious chagrin. "After the creation of the world, the first _feng shui_ warriors Jidan and Huoda defeated Leviathan and Da-chao, so the gods sealed themselves away in Materia. But they sealed most of their power in shrines all over the world and appointed guardians to protect them. Whoever would wield the full power of Leviathan would have to bring the Materia to these shrines and defeat the guardians to unlock the Materia's full power. I had the Materia sealed when I gave it to you and your friends. I didn't want them to discover the Materia's secrets. The seal is broken now."

"Did you say Da-chao had a Materia?" Yuffie asked, intrigued. "I never heard of that one."

"It's not important. It was lost hundreds of years ago."

She scoffed. "Who was dumb enough to lose a Summon Materia?"

"It was stolen by a priestess."

"Who was dumb enough to let her steal it?"

Godo sighed. "She was the last of the priestesses charged with guarding the two gods' Materia. Before the Kisaragi Dynasty, power was shared between the priestesses, the army, and the Emperor. That's why we have the Pavilion, the Pagoda, and the Palace. As you know, our family was once in charge of the army. When our ancestor overthrew the Emperor, some people believed that he disrupted the sacred balance of power. The last priestess suspected that the new Emperor would try to control access to the gods, so she tried to escape the capital with the gods' Materia. She escaped with only the Da-chao Materia. No one ever saw her again. One legend says that Da-chao punished her by opening up the earth and swallowing her up, causing the Materia to be lost forever. Another legend says she escaped and left the Materia somewhere we don't know."

"Why didn't anyone look for it?"

"I just told you, it's not important."

"All Materia's important!" Yuffie insisted

"No Materia is as important as the Leviathan Materia."

"Well, whatever. So you want me to power up the Leviathan Materia."

"Yes. I found a map of the shrines in our library." Godo bent down to pull something out from under the cushion again.

"Got anything else under there?"

Godo looked at her reproachfully and handed her the map. "Do not tell anyone about your mission."

She took the map, but didn't open it. Her father sighed again. "Something's wrong. You're not arguing with me."

"It's stupid!" Yuffie burst. "You want to fight Longhua over water? How is that any different from Shinra fighting us over a stupid mako reactor?"

Godo's face darkened. "You didn't fight in that war. Don't pretend to understand what happened. And have you forgotten that you are the Master of the Pagoda and commander of the army, or should have been ever since you defeated me? It is your duty—"

"Duty, my ass! I'm not a kid, you can't just tell me what to do or what side to pick—"

"I'm asking you to help defend Wutai," Godo cut in angrily. "If all you have to say to that is 'you can't tell me what to do,' you _are_ a child. Now will you do what I say or not?"

"I don't take orders from you!"

"Fine!" Godo held out his hand. "Give those back to me!"

"Take 'em! I don't want 'em."

She gave the Materia and the map to him and stormed towards the door. Halfway there, she heard a thud. She whirled around: a figure in dark clothing was standing in front of Godo. There was a loud clang as Godo drew his _dao_ just in time to block the attacker's sword. Yuffie whipped one of her throwing knives from its sheath and hurled it at the attacker, who spun around and swatted it away with his sword. The other four Wusheng rushed into the room, but the attacker flung something to the floor. A flash blinded them all. By the time the spots cleared from their eyes, the attacker was gone.

Chekhov spun around, searching all corners of the room. "An assassination attempt?"

"Are you hurt?" Shake asked Godo.

"I'm fine," Godo answered. "I think he was after the Materia."

"Didn't you check for spies before the meeting?" Yuffie demanded.

"We searched the whole grounds just before the meeting started," said Shake. "It could have been someone at the meeting."

"We need to be on our guard. Anyone could be a double agent," Staniv said pointedly.

Yuffie bristled. "Leave me alone!"

Godo glared at her. "You've said enough. Go."

Shortly after she left the dojo, Yuffie received a text message from her fellow WRO member Yvonne, saying that she was in town and asking if Yuffie would be down to get drinks at Turtle's Paradise. Within an hour, Yuffie was slouched across the table from Yvonne. Her head felt wonderfully light after the mess she went through an hour earlier, not just because of the mai tai, but because she'd gotten all her complaints off her chest: how she was pretty sure she was on Longhua's side, how her father tried to force her to power up the Leviathan Materia for Wutai, and how she had no plans to take orders from anyone, no siree.

Yvonne reached across the table to trade drinks with Yuffie. "Lord Godo probably trusts you a lot if he gave you the Leviathan Materia," she commented. "It's the most important Materia in Wutai. If he gave it to you, that's saying a lot."

"A lot? You mean, like he _really_ wants me to help him fight against Longhua?" Yuffie asked scornfully. "Well, tough. I ain't gonna do it."

Yvonne sighed. "I wish my dad had that much confidence in me."

"Does he not?"

"We're not close. He… was never around. He lives in Longhua, so I visit him when I come home, but we don't talk much. I think he's disappointed in me."

"Why's he have any right to be disappointed if he was never around?"

"I guess he doesn't, but… I'd still do anything for my dad to recognize me as his daughter."

Yuffie didn't understand why that was so important to Yvonne, but she decided not to ask. "What about your mom? Did you get along with her?" She knew that Yvonne's mother had passed away in the Geostigma epidemic.

"Yeah."

"That's somethin'," Yuffie said enviously. "I don't remember anything about my mom."

"I don't remember hearing much about Her Majesty either." Suddenly Yvonne laughed. "We couldn't be more different. Your mom was an empress, and mine was a _kisaeng_."

"You shouldn't call your mom that!"

"No, I'm serious. She was a _kisaeng_."

"Oh." Yuffie didn't know what to say. _Kisaeng_ were technically entertainers—artists, musicians, poets—but they had a reputation as prostitutes. As a child, Yuffie often heard the court ladies gossiping about noblemen's affairs with _kisaeng_.

"Now you know why my dad wasn't around."

"That sucks."

Yvonne shrugged. "What can you do, right?" She raised her glass. "To our mothers?"

"Sure."

After another round of drinks and talking about things Yuffie couldn't remember shortly afterwards, they left the bar. "Are you sure you can make it home from here?" Yvonne asked.

"'Course!" Yuffie pointed. "The Palace is that way." She paused and spun around. "No, it's that way."

Yvonne laughed and waved. "Good night."


	5. The Shadow of the Water God

_Wham!_

Yuffie shot upright with a knife in her hand. "Who's there?" she demanded, rubbing her eyes with her other hand.

Her father's voice came from the doorway of her room. "I packed your bag for you. You're leaving now."

"Leaving? Where?" She squinted at his silhouette.

"To your foreign army."

"You mean the WRO? Did I miss the New Year?"

"If you're not going to fight in the war, you don't need to be here."

Yuffie stared at her father in disbelief. "I come all the way home every year for the New Year! You can't kick me out just because—"

"Celebrations will be short this year. I have to train with the army." Godo stepped out of her room and slammed the shoji door shut. "I want you out in an hour," he called through the door.

Yuffie almost hurled the knife at the door, but managed to restrain herself. "What is your _problem_?" she hollered.

"You!" came the muffled response.

She crawled across the floor to the large bag on the floor and rummaged through its contents. For some reason, her father packed all of her weapons: her fighting gloves, her katana, some throwing knives, her bow, and a quiver full of arrows. There was also a silk pouch that Yuffie assumed contained food for the journey. Judging by the round bulges, it was packed with oranges. A long, thin wooden box probably held a _tantō_ or a set of chopsticks.

Yuffie's disgust at her father briefly gave way to guilt. The leader of Wutai should have had an obedient daughter to agree with him and do what he asked her to do. Yuffie couldn't be that daughter. It wasn't who she was.

She removed the bow and quiver from the bag. They were too heavy, and they were her least favorite weapons anyway. She buckled the katana to her back and the knives to her thighs, put her fighting gloves on, and tied the silk pouch to her katana's strap. She slid the shoji door open and walked down the hall to the side door leading out to the square. Her hoverboard and shuriken were still leaning against the wall by the door. She took them both with her and went outside.

In the late morning sun, An-xi Square was full of soldiers from each of the army's five units, all undergoing various exercises while the Wusheng observed and instructed them. As Yuffie passed them on her way out of the square, she spotted Gorky correcting a karateka's stance, Shake walking briskly between pairs of sparring ninja, Chekhov lecturing the _feng shui_ warriors, Staniv sparring with one of the samurai, and Godo speaking with the members of the elite force known as the Crescent Unit.

During her training at the dojo, Yuffie had tried to learn both ninjutsu and _feng shui dao_. She couldn't imagine anything more fun than learning how to sneak around and play tricks on people (which was basically what ninjutsu was for), and _feng shui dao_ was basically magic. Yuffie's father claimed that _feng shui dao_ was a waste of time and ordered the instructors to train Yuffie only in ninjutsu. She ended up running away from home before the end of her training and learning _feng shui dao_ while she traveled with Cloud and the others. She learned that _feng shui dao_ was similar to the Western Limit Break, but Wutaian Limits could control nature, whereas most Western Limits could not. If she hadn't left home, she would never have learned _feng shui dao_. The whole story just reinforced how important her freedom was to her.

She turned her back on the scene and headed towards the Meridian Gate. Outside the square, in broad daylight and with the New Year approaching, the city was lively. People were sweeping the streets, touching up the crimson paint on buildings, and shouting directions at each other from the rooftops while they strung new red lanterns above the streets. Through the open gate of a small courtyard off the main road, Yuffie caught a glimpse of dragon dancers rehearsing for their annual performance. The fronts of clothing stores were draped with scarlet silk _changshan_ and cheongsam. When the city was like this, Yuffie almost believed it still had a pulse. But it was still the same scene every year. She almost felt relieved that she had an excuse to miss the celebrations.

Suddenly she realized that she had never spent the New Year in Longhua. They probably had more exciting celebrations there. She could stay over at a friend's place until it was time to return to the WRO. She grinned. She would make the most of this exile!

On the bridge, she heard two people talking excitedly. "It's all a scheme of the West!" one of them was insisting. "Lord Minazuki is a puppet of Western businesses. He says it is all in the name of Leviathan, but there is nothing Wutaian about Longhua anymore."

The other person disagreed: "Lord Minazuki doesn't want to be a puppet. He just wants to get back at the Kisaragi family." Yuffie was out of earshot before she heard the rest of the argument, but she knew they were talking about the hostility that had existed between the two families ever since the Kisaragi family successfully led a coup against the imperial family without involving the Minazuki family, their longtime allies. The more she listened to other passing people, the more she heard that almost no one was talking about the New Year. They were all worried about the prospect of war with Longhua. _People are a lot more interested in politics than they used to be,_ she thought. _They used to just talk about crap like the ocean of life, or complain that things ain't how they used to be._

Yuffie emerged from the other side of the city gate and saw the old imperial road stretching out before her. On either side of the road lay the barren rice fields, frozen from the winter chill. Yuffie dropped her hoverboard on the ground and sped down the road. Halfway to the mountain pass, she remembered that she didn't have a place to stay in Longhua. She stopped by the next roadside village for a short lunch and a call to Wade. "Of course you can crash at our place!" he said. "It'll be a little crowded, but we'll squeeze you in. What's your ETA?"

"Late, probably two in the morning?"

"Okay. We'll probably still be up." Wade laughed. "Call me when you get here."

Yuffie passed through the mountainous province of Xiantong and reached the north part of Tayuan Province by evening. From her vantage point in the northern mountains, the sunset threw brilliant orange light onto the eastern mountains and the glittering lake in the distance. She slowed down and stopped to enjoy the view.

Something slammed into her from behind, knocking her off her hoverboard and sending her crashing onto the ground with a yelp. She rolled to her feet to glare at her attacker, who leaped off his hoverboard and approached her with sword drawn. He was dressed from head to toe in dark gray clothing and had a scarf wrapped around his face. "Who do you think you are, crashing into me like that?" Yuffie demanded, drawing her katana. "And what gives?"

In response, the attacker raised his sword. Yuffie had forgotten how long it was since she last fought with a katana and narrowly avoided being impaled in the first few minutes. Gradually, the memory of sparring matches at the dojo returned to her, and she caught up with the attacker enough to send him stumbling for a moment.

She stalled. "Listen, whoever you are! If you apologize, I'll let it go! I'd hate for you to get your ass kicked just because you weren't watching where you were—"

The attacker lunged forward. Yuffie jumped back just in time, but the tip of his sword slashed through the cord of the silk pouch. She let the pouch fall to the ground as she continued parrying the attacker's strikes, but a deep red sphere glimmering among the fallen pouch's folds caught her eye. _The Leviathan Materia?_

The attacker snatched up the pouch and sped off on his hoverboard. "Hey!" Yuffie shouted. She jumped onto her hoverboard and sped off in chase. Judging carefully, she sent her shuriken flying after the attacker. Just as she intended, it grazed the hand holding the pouch, forcing the attacker to drop it. He stopped and hesitated, but soon changed his mind and sped off. Yuffie reached up to catch her shuriken and leaped onto the ground where the pouch lay. There among the oranges were the thin box, the map that Godo tried to give her, and the Materia.

Yuffie clenched her fists and spun around to face north. "Do you really think I'm going to change my mind just because you snuck the Materia into my stuff?" she shouted, as if her father could hear her from halfway across the country. As her furious shouts echoed among the mountains, she considered turning back and returning home just to give the Materia back to Godo along with an earful about how she didn't want to get involved and he couldn't force her to do anything. But she decided that it was his fault for sending the Leviathan Materia away with her because he wasn't going to get it back, powered up or not.

Just to make sure he hadn't given her any other dangerous things, she opened the thin wooden box. Inside was a long gold hairpin, the kind only married women wore. It was adorned with a red jade phoenix with a pearl in its talons. Yuffie thought it looked vaguely familiar and realized that it once belonged to her mother. Now it lay in front of her shrine. Confused, Yuffie closed the box again, replaced the pouch's contents, and strapped the pouch to her back.

The rest of the journey was uneventful. A few more hours after night descended on the land, Yuffie finally reached the glittering city of lights. Wade gave her directions to the high-rise where he was staying with two friends. Since the three slept in the apartment's only bedroom, Yuffie slept on the couch in the living room. She woke up around noon as Wade was heating up leftovers in the microwave. "So what brings you back here so soon?" Wade asked over their lunch.

Yuffie had already thought about what to say, considering that she didn't know how much Wade knew about the impending war and Wutai's military preparations. "I argued with my dad about how New Year's always the same every year. Same decorations. Same dances. Same food, relatives, firecrackers. Same everything, every year. He kicked me out, so I thought I'd see how you guys celebrate the New Year here in Longhua."

"Oh," said Wade, looking slightly embarrassed. "You might be disappointed. The city doesn't have any official celebrations. Firecrackers are banned. And parades cause traffic everywhere. It's a lot for the city to deal with, so we just don't do all that. We eat with our families and go out drinking with our friends, but only the day of. We don't celebrate for a week or two like you probably do in Wutai."

"Oh."

After lunch, Yuffie went on a walk down Seaward Boulevard to figure out what to do next. She didn't feel like staying in Longhua just for the New Year if they were only going to celebrate for a day. Maybe she should just go back to the WRO. She reached the end of the boulevard and found herself on the plaza with the enormous statue of Leviathan. Skirting the statue, she leaned against the metal railing and stared absentmindedly at the deep blue sea. It was a sunny afternoon, much warmer than the rest of Wutai with its frigid mountain air.

The sound of footsteps behind her made her turn around. A middle-aged man in a black suit regarded her with a curiously eager face. His closely cropped black hair was streaked with silver, and he had a clean-shaven face with striking, brilliant blue eyes that reminded Yuffie of her friend Yvonne's eyes. "I think I have the pleasure of meeting Miss Yuffie Kisaragi," he remarked, extending a hand and smiling.

"That's me. Who're you?"

"Takuji Minazuki. Pleased to meet you."

Yuffie stared in disbelief at the leader of Longhua and the head of one of Wutai's noble families. "Forgive me for interrupting," he went on, "but I'm surprised to see you here. Our cities have been at odds as of late."

"I'm not spyin'," said Yuffie, belatedly realizing that it was an unwise comment to make.

Minazuki simply smiled. "And I'm not here to confront you. I was taking my usual afternoon walk when I saw you. I was struck by your resemblance to your mother, the late Empress. You have her face, especially her eyes."

"Did you know my mom?"

"I was present at the wedding. After all these years, I still remember her striking eyes. A pity she died when you were still so young."

"Yeah," said Yuffie, not knowing what else to say.

Minazuki stood at the railing and stared out at the sea. "I have something to ask of you," he said suddenly. "My informants tell me that war is imminent. I'm told that Wutai's army is training at this moment in preparation to launch an attack on Longhua. You must agree with me when I say that they have no chance against our army," Minazuki said, looking grave. "I know you have much in common with the people of Longhua, but I also understand that you may not wish to fight against your father and his people. I want to know if you can do one thing for us—and for them."

"What?"

"Convince them to surrender before it's too late." Apparently in reaction to Yuffie's astonishment, Minazuki explained, "You and I both know that the people of Wutai will fight to the death before they surrender. And I know that Longhua's army will show no mercy if your army doesn't surrender. I think Wutai will listen to you."

"Hold your chocobos. Wutai won't fight to the death. Weren't you there when we surrendered to Shinra?"

"No, but that's beside the point."

"It's not gonna work anyway. They'll just think I'm a traitor."

Minazuki sighed. "Maybe it was foolish of me to hope. But I hoped it wouldn't have to end in so much death."

Yuffie decided to change the subject. "Nice statue," she said, looking up at the giant statue of Leviathan.

Minazuki smiled proudly at the statue. "It took only a year to fabricate. We wanted a statue that would define an era just as much as your statue of Da-chao did. Wutai's was the golden age of handmade things and painstaking labor that took years, sometimes even decades. But the age of industry and efficiency on this continent begins in Longhua. We thought Leviathan, the Water God, was an appropriate symbol of this. Water always rushes forward and takes the fastest course. Earth remains where it is. And so your Da-chao, the Earth God, is an appropriate symbol of the old days. Did you know that our ancestors used to call Da-chao 'The Protector,' while they called Leviathan 'The Destroyer?'"

Yuffie frowned. "Weird. Everyone likes Leviathan more."

"Our ancestors feared the water before they learned to control it. When the Lotus River flooded during the summer storms, farmers believed Leviathan was punishing them. But we should also recognize that after destruction, there is always growth. When the flood destroys, it gives us a chance to begin anew. We, too, should not be afraid to tear down what we must in order to bring forth a new, better order."

"Uh," said Yuffie, "sure." This discussion was getting too philosophical for her, but the implications of Minazuki's words didn't slip past her. Probably sensing that his musings had gone too far, Minazuki changed the subject. They talked about the drought, the new construction in Longhua, and things of small consequence before Minazuki bid Yuffie farewell and walked away.

She knew that he was her father's enemy, but she couldn't help being impressed. He was polite and eloquent. He actually seemed to want peace, not war. But his request made one thing clear to her: she couldn't stay in Longhua. She doubted that he found her entirely by chance. She was being watched. If she stayed anywhere on the continent, she would be found and forced into the war one way or another. She would have to stay far away until the war ended, whichever way it ended, and hope that she wouldn't come home to a smoking ruin of a land. She booked her passage on the overnight ship to Kalm that night and told Wade that she changed her mind about staying for the New Year. Wade didn't seem surprised and cheerfully saw her off.

On board, Yuffie decided to fall asleep before her seasickness set in. Inside the cabin, she pushed her weapons under the bunk and lay down, only to yelp when she accidentally sat on the pouch with the Leviathan Materia, the oranges, and the box with her mother's hairpin. She opened the pouch and retrieved the Materia, thinking about her conversation with Minazuki. She wondered if he knew she had the Leviathan Materia. Was that the reason he kept going on about Leviathan? Was all that talk about washing things away and starting over just code for, "I really wish I had the Leviathan Materia so I could wipe out Wutai"? Was he the one who attacked her in the mountains? If so, why didn't he try to take the Materia when they were talking? Or did he expect her to offer up the Leviathan Materia? Was someone going to break into her cabin in the middle of the night and try to take it?

She decided not to think about it and stared at the Materia instead. It was beautiful: a bold, rust red like the red jade phoenix adorning her mother's hairpin, or like the rocky face of Da-chao Statue at sunset. It was the color of the distant past, of humid summers when she used to climb Da-chao Statue to escape the thick, heavy air. The mountain air was cool and fresh, a welcome relief from her caretakers' shouting and the stifling air of her room in the Palace.

She closed her eyes. In a way, life was simpler back then: when her being Lord Godo's only surviving child didn't seem to matter so much, when the world was so much smaller, and when all she had to do to escape from people telling her what to do was climb into the mountains…


	6. Back in Time: The Sign of the Empress

_I was like you. I thought my life was all about being free to do as I wished. After my first three years as a scholar-official, I began to think differently, but I wouldn't say my life changed—not until the night I was betrothed._

Even at night, there was no escaping the stifling summer humidity.

Every year on Tanabata, if the skies were clear, the imperial court hosted an elegant celebration in the Palace gardens. Nobles, scholar-officials, and their wives fanned themselves languidly. Lanterns among the bamboo groves filled the garden with a flickering golden glow that glanced off the rippling pond and onto the cotton kimonos, making them shimmer like silk. Conversation filled the warm air as the scholar-officials and nobles wandered between their social circles. Behind the chatter there was music: the gentle plucking of lute strings against fluttering, delicate percussion. With a mournful voice that flowed like honey and quivered like a candle, a _kisaeng_ sang the legend of the star-crossed lovers who were separated by the Silver River in the heavens and permitted to reunite once a year on a bridge of magpies.

Although she always looked forward to the elegance of imperial court functions, Kasumi found it difficult to focus tonight. Far away, from the street festival by the river, faint drumbeats swept her thoughts away from the lush gardens and back to the crowded streets of her childhood, and to the festivals in mother's hometown of Puhua Si. All at once, the call of the distant drums was too much. Kasumi slipped out of the garden. As she walked down the main street along the river and towards the great stone bridge, the sights, sounds, and smells of the street festival greeted her senses. Brightly colored paper streamers dangled from the eaves of the buildings lining the main street. Lotus flowers and bamboo branches, scattered on the river's surface, bore pieces of paper with handwritten wishes. Children chattering excitedly ran past Kasumi on their way to the bridge, where _taiko_ performers whirled and shouted to the spirited rhythm of their drums. The air was full of the rich aroma of street food from stalls outside restaurants.

The _kumi-daiko_ ensemble concluded its number with a dramatic crescendo culminating in a triumphant shout and a boom like thunder. They bowed and cleared the bridge. Young men and women dressed in their best summer kimono took their place. When a flute, a _koto_ , and a drum began a lively duet, the dancers unfurled paper fans and led the crowds in a dance. Kasumi pulled her fan from her sash and happily joined in. There was whirling and laughing and chattering against the lively music. Kasumi found herself dancing on the bridge and closed her eyes, taking in the sea of sounds around her—

 _Wham!_ Kasumi reeled from the collision. An arm wrapped around her waist to steady her, and she found herself staring into the astonished violet eyes of the Emperor Kisaragi Godo.

The Emperor snatched his arm away, shielded his face, and hurried past Kasumi. She stared after him. He was supposed to be at the summer palace in the northwest. Why was he in the city? And why was he dressed as a commoner? Kasumi shook her head. What the Emperor did in his spare time was none of her interest. She raised her fan and rejoined the dance.

By the end of the song, she was dizzy and out of breath, but in her exhilaration she hardly noticed. The cheering, the shouting, the dancing: it was all so wild, so different from the restrained elegance she had left behind in the Palace gardens. She wanted to join the next dance, but since she was in the city, she might as well visit her father. No doubt he was watching the festivities from his small house by the river, a few minutes' walk from the bridge. Kasumi knocked on the door and called, "Father? It's me, Kasumi."

She opened the door to find her father sitting at the table with the Emperor. Startled, she sank into a deep bow. When she lifted her eyes, the Emperor was staring determinedly at the table while her father smiled in greeting. "You are just in time," he said. "His Majesty has asked me for something important. I think you should be the one to decide."

He stood up to leave the room. "Sir," the Emperor said quickly, "I came to discuss this with you, not your daughter."

Kasumi's father smiled politely. "Your Majesty, I trust my daughter to make the right decision."

He backed into the next room and closed the door. The Emperor, looking still more uncomfortable, turned to Kasumi. "Please sit down, Official Faruno."

They sat in silence. The only sound was the faint but vigorous thumping of drums from the street.

Finally the Emperor cleared his throat. "As you know, it is rare for an Emperor of age to be unmarried so long into his reign."

"I didn't know, Your Majesty."

"The noble families have offered Us their daughters in marriage," the Emperor continued. "They see that the Empire is weak, the court is corrupt, and the Emperor is young. Through marriage, they hope to take advantage of Us, but We intend to secure a political alliance. If your father—if you," he corrected himself, "were to give your consent, We would marry you."

"If Your Majesty is looking for a political alliance, I should be your last choice. I am a low-born woman who does not care about the Empire."

The Emperor looked surprised. "What about what everything you did during your service in Puhua Si?"

"I did it to spite the government for neglecting the people of Puhua."

"But you acted as a government official in doing so," the Emperor pointed out. "You could continue to do good deeds as the Empress of Wutai."

"Why would I want to do that?"

The Emperor looked at Kasumi in silence. Finally he said, "Earlier this evening, you were dancing with the people. You have something We do not: a connection with the people of Wutai." He took a deep breath. "I want to do good for the people, but as you know, my hands are tied because the scholar-officials do not think I am on the same level as them. I need your help. I do not know you well, but I believe you want to want to continue doing good for the people of Wutai. If you do, then we are on the same side."

Kasumi decided to humor him. "I will accept your offer on one condition," she informed him. "If you want me to be an Emperor's wife, you will have to be a commoner's husband. One wife. No concubines."

The Emperor looked offended. "According to tradition, We are entitled to—"

"You already broke the rules by asking a woman of low birth to be your Empress," she pointed out. "Tradition doesn't apply anymore. So I will be your wife if you will be a commoner's husband."

The Emperor was dismayed. Kasumi knew that she was being bold, if not downright insolent. She was certain that, faced with the choice between as many women as he wanted and the one woman he wished to marry only for political advantage, the Emperor would give up and leave. He composed himself and pronounced his reply.

"Fine."

Kasumi was astounded. "Are you serious?"

"Yes," he responded. "Are you?"

There was a strange look on his face. Kasumi realized that he looked vulnerable. For the first time, she saw him not as the Emperor, but as a man named Kisaragi Godo, who was only a few years older, who had a clean-shaven face that made him look like a boy—but who carried on his shoulders the burden of the prosperity and unity of the whole nation. She, a scholar-official apathetic to the state of the Empire, was faced with an Emperor who wanted to rule well. She couldn't help but admire his resolve.

"Yes," she said.

The Emperor looked relieved. "Thank you."

From a pocket, he retrieved a thin bundle wrapped in silk and placed it on the table. When Kasumi looked at him with questioning eyes, he nodded. She unwrapped the bundle and found a long golden hairpin. One end tapered to a rounded point. On the other end was a red jade phoenix clutching a pearl in its talons.

"The phoenix is the symbol of the Empress," the Emperor explained. "The pearl represents wisdom. We understand that the pearl is a symbol of Puhua Si as well. This is Our betrothal gift to you. Do not tell anyone of the engagement until We have told Our advisors."

Kasumi bowed her head. "Yes, Your Majesty."

The Emperor stood up, made his way to the door, and left the house with a nod of farewell. The moment the door closed behind him, Kasumi's father walked back into the room. He had been listening, as Kasumi expected. He looked at the outside door and back at Kasumi with a troubled face. "So you are to be the Empress of Wutai."

"And the Emperor's only wife," she added.

"Do you trust him to keep his word?"

"No woman would be the concubine of an Emperor whose Empress is a commoner. He must know that."

"You are a scholar-official and the daughter of a former Master of the Pagoda," her father pointed out. "You are hardly a commoner."

"Most of the imperial court thinks otherwise."

Her father frowned. "Why, because your mother was from Puhua?"

"I think so."

Her father sighed. "But why did you agree to marry His Majesty?"

"Weren't you and _oniisan_ worried that I wouldn't be able to marry because of my career?" she asked teasingly. She looked down at the Emperor's gift. "I agreed to marry him because he wants to be a good Emperor."

Although her father looked confused at her answer, he didn't press the matter. Kasumi stood up to leave, and they wished each other a good night.

Outside, the festival was ending. Among the dispersing crowds, the same children who ran and shouted so excitedly earlier now rubbed their eyes and murmured sleepily on their way home. The food vendors handed out the last of their goods, folded up their stalls, and retreated inside for the night. On the bridge, Kasumi watched the last of the bamboo branches drifting around the river bend. She unwrapped the Emperor's gift, the hairpin bearing the sign of the Empress. It gleamed in the faint moonlight. And just as a captain at sea looked up at the stars to find his way, so Kasumi felt that she had finally found her way, that the course of her life had been directed to its destination, and that she was on the brink of a great adventure that was just beginning.


	7. A Mother's Request

Yuffie was standing in pure white snow that gave way easily when she took a step forward. She looked up. Snowflakes fell and swirled all around her, and she couldn't see far in front of her because of an icy mist in the air.

"Behind you!"

Yuffie spun around. There, standing in the snow not far away, was a Wutaian woman wearing a pale gray kimono with plum blossom patterns along the hem. Her hair was pulled away from her face in a low chignon held in place with a long wooden hairpin—a married woman's hairstyle. Her face, like Yuffie's, was round with a pointed chin. She had large, dark eyes. In a moment of panic Yuffie thought she was looking at an older, married version of herself—but the sound of that soft, low voice, so different from her own, awakened a long-lost memory that told her she was looking at her mother, the Empress Kasumi.

She looked at Yuffie eagerly. "You don't look like me as much as I thought you would. But you still have your father's eyes."

Yuffie wanted to ask a thousand questions, but only one came out: "You're… dead, right?"

Her mother laughed. "Hello to you too. I don't have much time, so please do me a favor. Come and meet me here. Find this place in the real world. I'll meet you there."

"What do you mean, 'the real world'? Is this a dream?"

"Yes. So when you wake up, come and find me here."

Yuffie looked around at the fields of snow. "Where is this? The Great Glacier? The North Crater?"

"Your friend in Kalm will help you find it. Find him and ask him to take you here."

"I don't think I have any friends in—"

"We are now arriving in Kalm." Yuffie bolted upright as the ship's announcer cheerfully continued with standard announcements about the time, the weather, and their next destination. After making sure that she had gathered all of her belongings, she quickly disembarked.

It was clear, cold morning in Kalm. Families greeted disembarking passengers who began talking excitedly but nervously about the impending war in Wutai. Past the docks, the town was as sleepy as ever, with its mostly empty cobbled streets, half-timbered houses, and tightly fastened shutters. Whenever she passed through Kalm, Yuffie never stayed long, but now she hesitated. She vaguely remembered having a dream about having to find a friend in Kalm. Why were dreams always so hard to remember?

Yuffie decided to forget about it and began walking to the southwestern edge of the town. Just past the docks, she passed a small café with shuttered windows when she heard a familiar male voice bellowing, "Whaddaya mean, you're closed?"

She turned around and saw Barret confronting an elderly Wutaian man standing on a ladder and holding a string of red paper lanterns to hang above his café. "We are close this week for New Year," he replied in a thick Wutaian accent.

"New Year?" repeated Barret incredulously. "You been closed the whole damn month for the New Year?"

"Wutaian New Year," Yuffie explained, walking over to the café. "It's on Friday."

"What kinda New Year happens at the end o' January?" Barret demanded.

"Wutai's New Year is different! Why not just go to another café?"

Barret jerked his chin at the café owner. "This guy's got the best tea in town!"

"Tea? Since when were you a tea guy? Well, whatever. You're outta luck for today. Let's go find another café."

"Wait!" the café owner called in Wutaian. Yuffie turned around. The man climbed down from the ladder and hurried over to her. "Did you just come from Wutai?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"We have heard that Longhua will soon go to war with the capital," he said. His face was lined with worry. "Is it true?"

Yuffie nodded. " _Aiya!_ " The café owner looked at the ground, his brow furrowed. "Our ancestors fought for our land. One country called 'Wutai.' Now it is all over. The West has torn us apart. _Shikata ga nai._ "

He turned and walked away, muttering to himself. Yuffie almost wished she could say something to comfort him—after all, in her pocket was the weapon that could decide the war—but the war wasn't her problem. She had already decided that.

Yuffie and Barret sat down at another nearby café with sandwiches and coffee. "So what're you doing here? D'you live here these days?" she asked.

"Nope, jus' here for the mornin'." Barret launched into some kind of explanation involving the mayor of Kalm and a "PV array," whatever that was. Although Yuffie quickly got lost in the terminology, she nodded along in pretend understanding. "I'm goin' jus' outside Kalm. Grasslands up to the neck. 'Course, this time o' year it's prob'ly covered in snow. I got a truck with snow tires jus' in case."

"Snow," she repeated, suddenly remembering her dream. _My mom was standing in the snow. She asked me to meet her. And she told me to find a friend in Kalm…_

"Yeah, snow. You get snow this time o' year in Wutai?"

"Nope. Listen, can I go with you on your site trip or whatever you're doin'?"

Barret stared at Yuffie incredulously. "The hell for?"

"I dunno. I got nothin' better to do," she lied, deciding that a story about her dream would be less convincing.

"I don' wantcha to get bored and start complainin' while I'm settin' up."

She eventually managed to convince Barret to let her join him. He stopped the truck about ten minutes from town. While he set up pieces of equipment she had never seen before, she looked around. It was just like what she saw in her dream: snowy fields, but with Kalm in the distance. The only difference was that there was mist in the dream. Here, the sunlight bouncing off the snow was blinding. Yuffie hadn't brought sunglasses and could barely see.

 _I had a dream that Mom told me to come here. I heard her voice for the first time since I was little. It was just a dream, but when I was dreaming, it felt so real._

Suddenly, the earth rumbled and groaned. A dark fissure opened in the blanket of white snow. "The hell's goin' on over there?" Barret shouted.

Yuffie gripped her shuriken. "I dunno, but you might wanna get ready!"

The crevice widened. An enormous blue hand emerged from the depths and clung to the edge. As Barret transformed his hand into a gun and Yuffie swung her shuriken behind her head, a blue-skinned, one-eyed giant clambered out of the pit.

Barret fired first, sending the giant lumbering after him with a speed that was frightening for its size. Yuffie sent her shuriken flying after it to distract it while Barret ran for cover. The giant whirled around and ran after her until Barret shot at it again. For a while, they kept the giant away from each other by attacking once it turned its back. Slow though it was, the giant eventually realized their strategy and backed off to keep both Yuffie and Barret in its sight. Then the giant pointed to Barret. A fireball blazed to life on its bloodied finger and shot towards Barret, who rolled out of the way just in time.

Using both its hands, the giant shot fireball after fireball at both Yuffie and Barret, keeping them too busy dodging to attack. "I think it's getting faster!" Yuffie shouted to Barret as she narrowly evaded another fireball.

"Use your Limit!" he hollered back, just missing the giant's attack. "The one that makes ya faster! I'll distract 'im!"

The barrel of his gun-arm blazed red-hot and shot a fireball of its own at the giant's eye. The giant howled and fell to its knees clutching its eye, giving Yuffie the time she needed to activate her first Limit. The world slowed to a crawl. She ran up to the giant, jumped, and swiped her shuriken across its chest several times. When the giant let out a prolonged roar of agony, Yuffie leaped back. Time sped up again. The giant fell on its face, clawed blindly at the ground, and began to disintegrate into tendrils of life energy. As these tendrils dissolved, Yuffie froze: her mother was standing there, surrounded by a cloud of mist. She was exactly as she appeared in the dream: her black hair tucked into a chignon with a wooden hairpin, her dark eyes smiling from her face. "Hi, sweetie," she said.

"Mom? What… what are you doing here?"

"I told you I would be here."

"Yeah, but that was a dream!"

"Can you meet me again in the church in Midgar? I'll explain everything then."

"Wait!" Yuffie protested. "You just got here!"

"The church in Midgar," her mother repeated, and suddenly, she and the mist were gone.

Barret kicked at the snow. "That was one ugly-ass monster."

Yuffie rounded on him. "Call my mom a monster one more time an' I'll show ya a monster!"

"You're tellin' me that one-eyed thing was your mom?"

"Not _that!_ Didn't you see her just now? There was a Wutaian lady standing in the snow right there, I was talking to her for about fifteen seconds—"

"I ain't seen no lady nowhere. Sure you weren't seein' things?"

"Positive!" insisted Yuffie, who was no longer sure.

Barret thought for a moment. "C'mere," he said, and returned to the WRO truck, which was somehow undamaged in the fight. He climbed into the back of the truck and reemerged with a small device. "Jus' what I thought. We're pretty close to the Lifestream. Y'know what that means."

"The Planet's in danger and I'm the only one who can save it!"

"Where the hell you get that from?" Barret demanded.

Yuffie sighed. "It was worth a shot, okay?"

"When the Lifestream gets close to the surface, ghosts start appearin'. Y'know where else this happens? The church in Midgar," he informed her. "Sometimes people see Aerith's ghost in the church. So, maybe you saw your mom's ghost."

"She told me to meet her at the church in Midgar."

"Then you should prob'ly do what she says."

He packed up his equipment soon after that, saying that a place close to the Lifestream wasn't a good spot for a PV array. "Spendin' the New Year with your family?" he asked Yuffie on the way back.

"Nope. Me and the old man had a fight. He was bein' more annoying than usual."

She found herself telling him about the arguments she'd had with her father, including how he dared to sneak the Leviathan Materia into her belongings, probably hoping that she would have a change of heart. Barret was skeptical. "Maybe he jus' gave it to ya for safekeepin'," he suggested. "He asks ya to go on this quest to help him prepare for war. You say you don' want nothin' to do with it. But he don't trust anyone else with the Leviathan Materia. So he gives it to ya for safekeepin'."

"Safekeepin', my ass!"

He didn't give up. "Maybe he's thinkin', 'If my daughter don't wanna be in this war, I ain't gonna force her. But she's gotta be safe, and this Materia's gotta be safe. She'll be safer with the Materia and the Materia'll be safer with her.' I'd do the same thing for my Marlene."

"Hmph. If he really wanted me to be safe, he would've just said so. And he wouldn't have been such an asshole about kicking me out of the house," she retorted.

Barret shrugged. "I don' know yer dad. I'm jus' sayin', dads don' always show their kids how they feel. Sometimes it's safer for 'em not to know."

Yuffie wanted to believe he was wrong, but she couldn't help remembering the way people in Wutai always talked about her father: sometimes with bitter disappointment, but mostly with pity. Everyone seemed to agree that of all the people of Wutai, Lord Godo was the one who lost the most in the war. Yuffie never understood why that was—why her father carried such a heavy burden. Was that his way of protecting her? How could he do that when he was barely keeping himself together, let alone all of Wutai?

On his way back to the WRO headquarters, Barret dropped Yuffie off at the Kalm train station, where she could take a train to Edge. It was an hour-long train ride, a journey that took slightly longer by car or hoverboard. As she stared out at the snowfields, Yuffie thought about how different Edge and Kalm were. Edge was like Longhua, a crowded city with tall buildings. Kalm was like Wutai, a quiet town that didn't change very much, although Kalm's port and the train station had brought some change. Maybe if Wutai and Longhua had a railroad, they wouldn't be so different.

When she had thoughts like this, Yuffie would begin to wonder if it wouldn't be so awful to lead Wutai. But the thought of losing her freedom always made her reconsider. Did she really want to give up the freedom of having adventures around the world?

Amid showers of rain, the train pulled into a glass station with high ceilings. Through the glass ceiling, past the blurred trails of raindrops, rose tall buildings obscured by mist. Yuffie considered putting off the trip to the ruins of Midgar, which would be muddy and miserable in the rain.

 _But when I saw her, I had this weird feeling that I forgot something important. Something I want to remember._

She reached into her pocket and found the box with her mother's hairpin inside it. The memory she wanted to remember had something to do with the hairpin. What was it?

She rode her hoverboard out of the city and into the nearby ruins. She didn't know her way around, but there was a paved road with a sign indicating that it led to the church. When she reached the battered doors, she saw a plaque on the wall proclaiming the church a "heritage site," whatever that meant, from the year 0010.

She pulled one of the doors open and walked inside. Straight ahead was the healing spring, now enshrined in a fountain with a statue of Aerith in the middle. She was kneeling, a basket of flowers by her side, with face upturned and her characteristic pensive expression.

 _Aerith always knew what she wanted. She wanted to be happy, but she also wanted to save the Planet. What about me? What do I want?_

"Yuffie? Is that you?"

A dark-haired woman emerged from behind the fountain. "Tifa!" Yuffie exclaimed. "What're you doing here?"

"Just cleaning up a little," Tifa answered, smiling. "I come here every week."

"It looks a lot better than the dump it used to be." Yuffie looked around. The church's walls were still dusty and mottled, but the ceiling was repaired, the broken pews had been cleared out, and the stained glass windows were all intact.

"I don't think it was ever a dump, but the city of Edge decided they wanted to make this place a monument after the healing spring appeared here. So they fixed it up, just short of rebuilding the whole thing. And they put in this statue. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Yeah! Is it new?"

"They finished it last year. It's called 'Flower of the Slums.' It's so realistic, it's almost like she's here again."

Yuffie remembered her conversation with Barret. "That reminds me. Have you seen her around here? Barret said that people see her here sometimes."

"Yeah. A couple of times I've opened the door and seen her tending to the flowers that people leave for her here. But she disappears when I come closer."

"So my mom's ghost appeared and told me to come here, but I don't see her," Yuffie said, looking around.

"What?" Tifa stared at her. "Did you say your mom's _ghost_ appeared?"

"Yeah. She appeared after I defeated a monster. Seen any monsters around here?"

"Monsters?" Tifa repeated, sounding even more confused. "I… don't think so. Sometimes there are monsters outside in the ruins, but they tend to stay away from—" She cut herself off and listened intently. "Do you hear that?"

Yuffie listened and heard a faint rustling noise, followed by hissing. They both looked around, but there was no monster lurking in the corners or in the pews. Finally, they looked up: the shadows between the wooden trusses in the ceiling were unnaturally dark.

Tifa pulled on her fighting gloves and gave Yuffie a nod. Yuffie unsheathed one of her throwing knives and hurled it up to the ceiling. With a shriek of indignation, a scaly, humanoid beast with a snake's head plummeted from the ceiling and landed in front of Yuffie and Tifa on all fours. Tifa immediately rushed towards the beast and attacked it with a flurry of kicks and punches. Yuffie quickly realized that using her shuriken inside the church would do serious damage, so she pulled on her own fighting gloves and joined Tifa. To their disgust, the beast counterattacked by lashing its long tongue around their wrists and ankles and yanking them close for a bite with its long, razor-sharp teeth. After several minutes of this, Yuffie noticed that angry welts were beginning to form on her wrists. Tifa guessed that the beast's saliva was poisonous. Yuffie yanked one of her knives from its sheath and slashed at the beast's long tongue, but it was tough and sinewy, and the burning sensation from the welts on her wrist limited her strength. "Hold him off for a second?" she called to Tifa. "I'm gonna heal us." Tifa promptly unleashed a quick succession of punches, followed by a somersault kick that sent the beast slamming into the wall. Yuffie closed her eyes and activated her second Limit. A cool mist gathered around her and Tifa, easing the burns. Then it was back into the fray. With two knives in hand, Yuffie slashed at the tongue over and over. Finally, the tongue fell from the beast's mouth. Tifa quickly finished the job, and the beast and its severed tongue dissolved into tendrils of life energy.

Yuffie looked around. Her mother was standing in front of the fountain and smiling. "Hi, sweetie," she said.

Yuffie ran over to the fountain. "Don't run away this time! I have five hundred questions for you. Number one: what exactly are you?"

"I'm your mother's spirit. Next question."

"Why are you here?"

"I came to ask you if you want to save Wutai."

"If I want to save…" Yuffie trailed off and narrowed her eyes. "Wait a second. If this is about the Leviathan Materia, forget it! I don't take orders!"

"Of course you don't. You're my daughter. You do whatever you want." Kasumi sighed, looking discouraged. "Then let me ask you a question. What _do_ you want?"

"To not get forced into a stupid war I don't believe in."

"I didn't ask you what you don't want. I asked you what you want." Kasumi turned around to face the statue of Aerith. "This is your friend, isn't it?" she asked. "After years of sleeping, I woke up in the Lifestream and met her. She told me she knew my daughter. She told me about a girl who left home when she was a teenager to travel the world, collecting Materia. But more than Materia, she loved her home. She climbed the Pagoda to challenge her father, Wutai's last Emperor and strongest warrior, and remind him who he used to be." Kasumi turned to face Yuffie. "Is this true?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Then let me ask you again: what do you want? Because no matter what it is, it doesn't change the fact that Wutai is going to be destroyed. So if you won't save Wutai, I at least want to know what you _will_ do."

 _Do I want to save Wutai? Do I want that more than my own freedom?_

 _Back then, saving Wutai_ was _my freedom. Even now… I'm free to choose Wutai._

She crossed her arms. She wasn't going to admit it. "So let's say I decide to save Wutai. I'm guessing I still have to do something with the Leviathan Materia."

"Unseal it by visiting the Shrines of the Water God. You've already visited the first two. You'll find the rest on your map."

"Okay, but what'll that do?"

"All Wutaians worship Leviathan. If you prove yourself worthy of the god's full power, Wutai and Longhua will listen to you."

Yuffie imagined herself standing at the top of a mountain with the Leviathan Materia in her hand, the Wutaian and Longhuan armies on either side of her, as they bowed down before the great dragon god. _I can do that. I'll be the savior of Wutai._ She beamed at her mother. "So all I have to do is power up the Materia? I can do that!"

Kasumi shook her head. "It's not that simple. Once you convince them that you can negotiate—"

Yuffie recoiled. "Negotiate?"

"That's how you're going to keep them from destroying each other, right?"

"Uh, someone else can do that part."

"I think you could do it." Seeing Yuffie's confusion, Kasumi continued, "How about this? I'll give you things to think about at each of the next shrines. By the end of the journey, you'll know enough to be able to put those pieces together. Then you'll know what you can say to the people of Wutai."

"So I'll see you again?"

"At the next Shrine of the Water God. You'll find the location on your map." Her mother began to disappear.

"Okay! See you soon!"

Kasumi disappeared, and Yuffie smiled at the Materia in her hand. Materia Hunter Yuffie was back in action.


	8. A Daughter's Journey

"How did you get over there?"

Yuffie turned around. Tifa was looking at her confusedly from the other side of the church. "My mom appeared," Yuffie explained. "I dunno how it works, but I think something weird happens with time when she appears."

"Did she talk to you?"

"Yeah! She said Wutai's in trouble. The only way for me to save it is to make this the strongest Materia in the world!" Yuffie said, proudly showing off the Leviathan Materia.

"Hmm," Tifa said. She looked like she was trying not to laugh. "If you say so."

"It's true!"

"Well, I should head back to Edge. I need to get ready to open the bar."

"I have to figure out where I'm going next. Can I spend the night at your place?"

"Of course! Let's finish up here, and then we'll go back."

Since Tifa drove to the church, Yuffie rode with her on the way back to Edge. "How long has your mom been… gone?" Tifa asked.

"She died when I was little. I don't remember much about her."

"I see. My mom died when I was little, too. Do you ever wonder what might have happened if she'd lived? How different we'd be if we had our moms around to take care of us when we were kids?"

Yuffie thought about it. "I dunno. I did whatever I wanted because my mom was gone and my dad wasn't around." Godo was physically absent during the war and emotionally absent when it ended. As the Princess, Yuffie had caretakers, but they gave up once she could outrun them. They were officially relieved of their duties when Godo abdicated and ended the monarchy. "My mom seems like the bossy kind. She'd probably just tell me what to do."

Tifa frowned. "Maybe that's one way of seeing it," she said. "But moms don't tell their kids what to do just to be bossy. They want their kids to grow up to be good people, right? You said that your mom wants you to help save Wutai. Maybe she wants to teach you everything she would have taught you when you were little. I think that means that her love for you lasted even longer than her life."

"Longer than life, huh? I can't even imagine how long that is. Not even my obsession with Materia lasted that long."

Tifa glanced at her. "Oh, are you sure that's over?"

"It is!"

There was a short silence before Tifa spoke again. "That reminds me… I never told you, did I? My mom was Wutaian."

" _Now_ you're telling me this?"

"You don't have to shout!"

"Where in Wutai was she from? D'you know?"

"I think it was called Shiantong?"

"Oh, Xiantong. Way up in the mountains, huh? And you never told me?"

"I think I was embarrassed."

"Embarrassed? Why?"

"I guess I just don't know what it means to be half Wutaian, much less to be Wutaian at all."

Yuffie laughed. "Is that all? I can tell you what it means! It means…"

She trailed off, realizing that she didn't know the answer after all. Tifa smiled sadly. "That's what I mean. I know it seems obvious to you because you're from there. But it's not so clear to people like me."

When they arrived home, they had a brief dinner with Denzel and Marlene before Tifa opened the bar for the night. Yuffie went up to Cloud's office to puzzle over the map.

Scattered across the map was a network of symbols in an ancient Wutaian script that she couldn't read. Using the large map on Cloud's wall as a reference, she found the symbol that looked like it might be near Kalm. That was probably the first shrine. Two lines pointed from it: one pointing to a symbol in the Midgar area and one pointing back to a symbol near the city of Wutai. With her finger, Yuffie traced the line from the symbol near Midgar to one on the northern continent in an area that was marked on Cloud's map as the Forgotten City. That symbol was connected to another one that might be near Icicle Inn. That symbol was connected to one that looked like it might be in the Cosmo Canyon area, and that symbol led back to the one near the city of Wutai. She counted them: six. She had already visited two, thanks to her mother.

She squinted at the symbols. Maybe there was an explanation or translation on the back of the map. She flipped the map over: it was covered with painstakingly neat strokes in a later form of Wutaian writing that she could read more easily.

 _The forty-eighth year of the reign of His Majesty, Shimotsuki Nijuudou, the Twentieth Shimotsuki Emperor._

 _I, Kannazuki Noriko, high priestess of the Temple of Heavenly Harmony and guardian of the Leviathan Materia and the Da-chao Materia, to those who would undertake the task of restoring the Materia, leave notes on the nature of the Materia, based on what scholars have learned from the quest for the Fenghuang Materia._

 _It is widely believed that when our ancestors first came to this land, the Water God Leviathan and the Earth God Da-chao willingly sealed themselves in Materia to help them. This is not so. The gods engaged our ancestors in a battle for their territory. After many days and nights locked in combat, the first_ feng shui dao _masters used a powerful technique that allowed them to bend all creation to their will. With this technique, they sealed the gods in Materia. In their last acts of rebellion, the gods sealed their power in various parts of the world, defining the landscape according to the nature of their power. Leviathan's power created mountain springs, rivers, bays, and lakes in certain areas of the world. In other areas, Da-chao's power created grasslands, deserts, forests, ice fields, and canyons. The Lotus River valley is the only location believed to contain both of the gods' power._

 _Over time, the gods' stagnant power corrupts, resulting in the birth of powerful beasts. These beasts enter the physical realm only when the Materia associated with the god whose power birthed them is within their environments. Defeating the beasts unseals the Materia's power._

 _We have brought both Materia to the Lotus River floodplain on multiple occasions. Nothing happens. We believe that the Lotus River floodplain must be the last of the "shrines" to be visited._

 _Over the years, travelers have brought back tales and descriptions of the lands they traveled and helped create these maps. Each symbol shows where the gods' power is likely to be sealed. The interpretations of these symbols may be found on the other map._

 _Kannazuki Noriko, high priestess of the Temple of Heavenly Harmony._

"Other map?" Yuffie muttered to herself. There was no other map. That map probably had Da-chao's shrines on it, so she didn't need it. The symbol in the Forgotten City was probably close to the lake where they had buried Aerith. The other symbol on the northern continent was probably somewhere just outside Icicle Inn. That made sense, since the whole place was probably surrounded with snow. The symbol in the Cosmo Canyon area might be in an oasis. After those three, all Yuffie had to do was return to Wutai to visit the Lotus River valley. That didn't sound so bad. Maybe she could even rope some of her friends into helping her.

Right on cue, the door opened and Cloud walked in with a beer in hand, followed by Tifa carrying two more beers. "Is it already closing time?" Yuffie asked in surprise.

"Did we interrupt your plans to take over the world with your Materia?" Cloud asked.

"How'd you know?" Yuffie took the beer Tifa offered her. "I was just thinkin', if you two wanna join me, you can be the Chief Imperial Guards of Empress Yuffie Kisaragi once my world domination is complete."

"I told him that you told me Wutai is in danger and you have a Materia that can save it," Tifa said. "He was like, 'Where have we heard that one before?'"

"But it's true!"

Yuffie told the story about how Wutai and Longhua were about to go to war, and how her mother's ghost appeared to her and asked her to go on the quest to restore the Leviathan Materia's power. Tifa frowned. "Did Wutai decide not to unseal the Materia's power during the war?"

Yuffie hadn't thought about that. "I guess so. I wonder why? Anyway, I just finished reading the map. It tells me where I have to go to break the seals on the Materia's power."

Cloud and Tifa examined the map. "It's not very accurate," Cloud remarked.

"Give us credit! We didn't have airships back then."

"These shrines are all over the map," Cloud observed. "That's probably why they didn't unseal the Materia. They just couldn't. It would take months if they were traveling by foot."

"Where do you have to go next?" Tifa asked Yuffie.

Yuffie pointed on the map. "The Forgotten City. The Great Glacier. Cosmo Canyon. Then I hightail it back to Wutai and finish the job!"

"The Forgotten City?" Tifa turned to Cloud. "Weren't you planning on visiting sometime soon?"

"Yeah," he responded. "In a couple weeks or so."

"You could visit early. That way Yuffie can get a ride with you."

"I could use your help," Yuffie supplied. "I don't even remember where the Forgotten City is!"

"Hmm." Cloud looked unsure. "I'm a delivery boy, you know. I can't just take a week off whenever I want."

"Aw, c'mon! I'll give you another 'Closed for Business' sign!"

That got a laugh out of him. "Okay, fine. Like Tifa said, I was planning on going anyway. Wanna leave tomorrow morning?"

"Sure!"

It took three days by motorcycle and ferry to reach the Forgotten City. Yuffie and Cloud traveled by day and slept at roadside inns that Cloud said he used whenever he was traveling to the Forgotten City. "Does anybody else stay here?" Yuffie asked, unimpressed by their run-down state. "Or is it just you?"

"Archaeologists who travel to the Forgotten City to do research, I guess. And maybe Vincent."

"Really?" Yuffie said excitedly.

"He said he goes to the Forgotten City 'often.' I don't know how often that is. What are you doing?"

Yuffie had taken out her phone, dialed Vincent, and put it on speaker mode. "You're not—" Cloud began, but she shushed him. She had to listen carefully because Vincent never said anything when he picked up.

When the ringing stopped, she spoke. "Hey, Vince! It's me! Are you anywhere near the Forgotten City right now?"

"No."

"Wanna be there in a couple days? I'll be there!"

"No."

"Okay. See ya soon!" She hung up and gave Cloud a thumbs-up. "Either he's already there or he's on his way!"

"That's… not what I heard."

They finally reached the Forgotten City around noon on the third day. Cloud parked his motorcycle outside the city and chose two swords to take with him. Then the two set off for the lake on foot. Even in broad daylight, the Forgotten City was eerie, with its roads like the spines of giant, ancient creatures and its ghostly white shell-like houses. It was a place so old that it seemed to sigh and groan with its age. Yuffie thought the city of Wutai was the only place like that. "So you come here every year?" she asked Cloud.

"Yeah, usually around her birthday."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, 'why'?"

"Why come back to the same place over and over? Doesn't it hurt to remember?"

Cloud didn't respond right away. "It's like how everyone in Wutai always talks about the way things used to be," Yuffie continued. "They're so hung up on the past that they're not really living in the present. If all remembering does is make you sad, why bother?"

"Remembering doesn't have to be sad."

She remembered standing below the altar, screaming at Cloud with the others when he raised his sword to kill Aerith—and then watching in horror when Sephiroth took away the one person she had ever looked up to, the closest she ever had to an older sister. "How can that _not_ be sad?" she asked.

"I don't come here to remember how she died. I come to remember why."

"What do you mean?"

"She showed me how to live for something more than myself. She reminds me that Tifa and the kids are counting on me. And that every day matters." Suddenly he paused and turned to Yuffie. "I guess what I'm saying is, remembering isn't just about reliving the past. It's about learning from yesterday so you can be a better person today." He resumed walking. "Sorry 'bout the sermon. You know where this monster is supposed to appear?"

"I dunno. It usually just shows up."

They passed into the forest and glimpsed the shimmering of the lake through the pale trees. Cloud stopped. "Wait. Do you hear that?"

Yuffie listened carefully. In the distance, she heard hissing. "I think it's at the lake!" As they approached the lake, she saw that the hissing was coming from an enormous serpent inside the lake. To her astonishment, there was already someone fighting it. "Yvonne?" she exclaimed, running towards her friend.

Cloud's voice called from behind her. "Yuffie, wait!"

She ignored him. Yvonne caught her shuriken and whirled around. Her face showed horror as she stared at something above Yuffie.

Before Yuffie could look up, a dark red cloth dropped over her eyes. The next thing she knew, she was standing twenty feet away from where she previously stood, watching an enormous hairy spider drop to the ground where she'd stood. Cloud was standing on top of it with the tip of his sword stuck into the spider's back. Yuffie's rescuer was standing beside her. "Vincent!" Yuffie said happily. Without a word of greeting, Vincent walked towards the spider and shot at it while it struggled to its feet. Yuffie turned to Yvonne, who was just behind her. "Are you okay?" Yvonne asked without taking her eyes off the thrashing serpent in the lake.

"I'm fine! Leave this one to me," Yuffie said confidently.

She realized that Yvonne seemed to have done a lot of damage already: the serpent was bleeding from multiple wounds. She tensed, preparing to move at a moment's notice. These kinds of monsters moved slowly but struck swiftly. The moment the serpent so much as twitched, she rolled out of the way and tossed her shuriken at it. Yvonne threw her shuriken at it while its head was turned away. With enough of these attacks, the serpent became sluggish with pain, slow enough for Yvonne to leap onto its back and drive her shuriken into its neck, lopping off its head.

Yuffie scanned the trees in search of Vincent, Cloud, and the giant spider. "Watch out!" Yvonne shouted.

Yuffie turned just in time to see the serpent's severed head lunging towards her with fangs bared. She spun out of the way a fraction of a second too late. A fang grazed her right hand, drawing blood. Ignoring the stinging pain, Yuffie ran off in search of her friends. They weren't far off among the trees: Vincent shot at the spider from the branches while Cloud struck the ground with his sword and sent a beam shooting through the spider. Once she was close enough, Yuffie focused on the pain in her hand, made a fist with her other hand, and punched the ground. The earth quaked. Sharp rocks shot up from the ground, impaling the spider. Its legs twitched and thrashed, then shuddered and went limp. Shortly afterwards, it dissolved into life energy.

Yuffie looked around. A cloud of mist appeared behind her, and from its depths her mother appeared. She approached Yuffie and held out her hand. "Show me your hand."

Confused, Yuffie held out her bloodied hand. Kasumi placed her hand over it. A green light shone. When Yuffie withdrew her hand, it was healed. She looked at her mother in awe. "You could heal, too?"

"I wish! That wasn't me. It's your friend acting through me."

Other than herself, Yuffie knew only one other person who could heal. "You mean Aerith?"

"Yes. She's the reason I can come and see you like this."

Yuffie smiled at the thought that her friend was still looking out for her from the other side. "She told me that you have the ability to heal, too," Kasumi continued. "Is that true? How did you learn that?"

"I learned it on my own!" Yuffie told her proudly. "Uh… or maybe Aerith taught me. I forgot. I don't really know how Limits—I mean, _feng shui dao_ —works."

"I was surprised because the _feng shui_ masters don't teach healing techniques. It's part of the martial philosophy of Leviathan: attack so that you don't need healing." Kasumi paused for a moment, thinking. "This is a good example. You've learned things from the West that you can use to change Wutai for the better, without changing everything the way Longhua did."

"Huh? What're you talking about?"

"Your healing technique. No one in Wutai could have taught you that. You learned that technique by gaining knowledge outside of Wutai. Wutai could use some of that curiosity. We could fix a lot of problems by learning from the West."

Yuffie nodded. "Yeah! That's what Longhua's doing."

"But we can't just forget our history and culture and try to start from scratch. Have you ever thought that 'tradition' doesn't just mean doing the same things exactly the same way over and over again?"

"That's stupid. What else would it mean?"

Kasumi smiled. "I'll give you a hint: enjoy the New Year's celebrations. See you next time."

When Kasumi disappeared, Yuffie saw Yvonne walking towards her. "Yvonne!" she said. "What brings you here?"

"The same as you," Yvonne responded. "Looking for Materia."

"Here? I wouldn't look for Materia here. And I'm not looking for Materia."

"You're not? Oh, that's right. Lord Godo gave you a mission."

Yuffie tried to remember when she told Yvonne about that. It was when they met up at Turtle's Paradise, after Godo tried to give Yuffie the Leviathan Materia. _Should I have told her about that?_

"So you ended up deciding to do it."

"Yeah." Yuffie thought about everything that had happened since she last saw Yvonne. "It's complicated, but yeah."

Yvonne smiled ruefully. "Guess that makes us enemies now. My father asked me to do something for Longhua."

"Your dad's giving you a chance? That's great!"

"I guess if anything good comes out of this, it's that we get our fathers' approval."

"Hold up. I ain't doin' this for anyone's approval."

"Oh." Yvonne looked away. "Well, I should probably get going."

"See you on the other side of the war?"

"See you."

Yvonne disappeared into the trees. Yuffie looked around. Vincent and Cloud were talking not far away. "Friend of yours?" Cloud asked as she approached.

"Yeah, she's in the WRO. But something's up. I think she's hiding something."

Cloud turned to Vincent. "Did you see what she was up to before we came?"

Vincent shook his head. "I heard noise from the lake and came to investigate. That was just before you came."

"I'm not really worried," Yuffie lied, hoping to convince herself. "Also, hi! I told Cloud you'd be here!"

"It was good to see you, Vincent. I'm headed back home, but Yuffie has to go on to the Great Glacier next. Maybe you can go with her?"

"Hey! I'll have you know that I'm a strong, independent—"

"Cid and I were at Icicle Inn finishing up a project for Reeve," Vincent interrupted. "I'll go with her."

They walked back to the lake and stood on its shore in silence. _You helped me meet my mom,_ Yuffie thought to Aerith. _Thanks for looking out for me. You really are the older sister I never had._

She thought of the brothers she couldn't remember, Farruo and Kuniyoshi. Maybe they were the reason she felt so attached to Aerith, Cloud, and the rest: they were the older siblings she wished she had. There was such a difference between never having any siblings and having them taken from her.

Cloud clapped Yuffie's shoulder. "Good luck."

"Thanks!" She looked up at Vincent. "Let's go!"

The road to Icicle Inn was a long journey along a road buried under snow. The bitter cold and the biting wind prompted Yuffie to turn up her coat's heating and hope that its battery wouldn't run low before they reached the town. Finally, long after nightfall, she and Vincent reached the top of the hill overlooking the small town with its steep, snow-covered roofs and shining windows. The normally sleepy town had a festive air about it. Yuffie squinted. Draped across the streets were strings of red paper lanterns. Dancers in a dragon costume leaped gracefully to the faint tune of Wutaian music.

Yuffie rubbed her eyes. "I don't believe it!"

She ran to the town gates. Now that she was closer, she saw that the instruments being used to play the music were not traditional Wutaian instruments, and the dancers were wearing a lion costume of heavy white fur instead of the bold turquoise silk of the traditional Leviathan-like costume. She looked around at the crowd. Some were Wutaian, but most were not.

"They're Wutaian immigrants," she said to Vincent. "Celebrating the New Year just like they always do in Wutai, but… different." _They used whatever they had and came up with something completely new, but completely… traditional._

The dance concluded to enthusiastic applause in the crowd. Then there were loud whistles and the night sky erupted into bright flowers of fireworks. Yuffie gazed at the sky in awe. The bright glow of the lights in the street, the humid warmth of standing next to so many people in the cold, the excited but hushed conversations filling the frosty air, the fireworks' light on rapt, upturned faces—it was all so familiar. It was home away from home.

"They do this in Wutai every year?"

Yuffie turned and saw Cid next to her, looking up at the fireworks with a cigarette between his gloved fingers. "Yeah!" she responded. "Every year!"

Cid exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Never cared for fireworks, but these ain't so bad. Maybe one day I'll make it back to Wutai for the real thing."

"You should! In Wutai it's even better! There're firecrackers all night and everyone wears red. There're flowers and lanterns and sake everywhere and every house smells like fried fish…" She trailed off. _What is this, nostalgia?_

"Sounded great all the way up 'til that last part."

When the fireworks display finished in one last magnificent explosion of color, the crowd burst into cheers and applause. Then, talking excitedly, they began to disperse. "Let's ditch this cold an' head on in," Cid said, dropping his cigarette and squashing it. "We can chat by a nice warm fire, jus' like the good ol' days."

Yuffie hesitated. Faintly, through the chatter, a familiar melody was rising from a small group of Wutaians standing in the middle of the street. Yuffie pushed her way towards them. The singers sang proudly, their voices in unison, clouds of mist issuing from their mouths. It was a Wutaian folk song. Yuffie remembered singing it as a child, but she had forgotten the words long ago. Listening now, she heard words of quiet poignancy, words brimming with the singers' nostalgia not just for the land they had left behind, but for a time that had flowered and wilted long before they were born. They sang of homesickness for a Wutai that they never knew, and of regret that their children would never know the Wutai that their parents had known. A strange feeling filled Yuffie's heart. _Not nostalgia._ _Something else. Something that makes me feel like I already know these people even though I don't know their names._

When the song ended, she approached the singers, expecting them to notice her, maybe even recognize her. One middle-aged woman looked intently at her for just a moment, but then she looked away and joined her companions in wishing each other a happy new year. Then they collected their bored teenagers and disappeared into the crowd. Yuffie was left staring speechlessly after them, feeling desperately that she already knew them yet unable to call them by name.

At the inn, Yuffie and Vincent pulled up chairs by the fireplace while Cid ordered drinks from the bar. Yuffie curled up in a chair. The Wutaian song was echoing in her head. With each echo, her last memory of her mother returned to her, piece by piece.

One day, Yuffie's caretakers told her that her mother was going far away and brought her to her mother's bedside to say goodbye. By then, her mother's face was so thin that Yuffie almost didn't recognize her. She told Yuffie that she was going to visit her parents and that Yuffie should train hard and become strong. Then she gave her hairpin to Yuffie and sang the fourth verse from that song. There was one more verse, but she didn't finish.

Yuffie didn't remember when she learned that her mother wasn't coming back, or even when she realized that her mother had died. She didn't remember feeling sad about her mother's death, because if she had any other memories of her, she forgot them as she grew up, until she had nothing left of her mother—not even the hairpin, because her father took it away when he came home from the war and saw her playing with it.

"What's that?"

Vincent's voice jolted Yuffie out of her thoughts. She had absentmindedly taken the hairpin out of the pouch. "My mom's hairpin," she answered. Vincent looked confused. "You wear it differently. Like this." Yuffie tried to pull her hair into a bun to insert the hairpin into it. "My hair isn't long enough." She looked at Vincent, trying to remember how he used to look. "Yours would be if you still wore it long."

"I can always grow it out again," he said, completely straight-faced.

"Oh, no. Don't," she said quickly. "It looks better this way."

They lapsed into silence until Vincent spoke again. "What was the song about?"

"I don't know the words, but it's about the seasons in Wutai. It talks about the snow in winter, the plum blossoms in spring, the lotus flowers in summer—"

"But what does it mean?"

Yuffie had never thought about it before, but now she knew the answer. The singers in the square had shown her. "It's about the old days. People say Wutai's golden age ended when it stopped snowing in the winter." Paintings all around the Palace depicted the city under a blanket of snow, and many folk songs praised the beauty of the snow gleaming from the dark, tiled roofs.

Vincent was silent for a while before he spoke again. "What happened back there—I've never seen anything like it."

Yuffie smiled ruefully. "I used to think it wasn't anything special. Did you see the bored kids on their phones while the adults were singing? That's usually me."

Vincent gazed at the fire. "Young people take traditions for granted. It takes time to see that tradition connects the past and the present. And the future. By the time most people realize they want to save a part of their past, it's usually too late." He looked back at Yuffie. "But you're still young. You have time to save your culture before it disappears."

"Before it disappears?" she repeated, laughing. "You would say something like that! Wutai's culture ain't gonna disappear anytime soon."

"It only takes a few important people to kill tradition. I was in Shinra. I saw people give up their old ways of life to be part of the modern world."

 _Like Longhua,_ she realized. _Trying to be like the rest of the world, but at a cost. Maybe there's a way to help them remember… what it means to be Wutaian. How to move forward without forgetting where we came from._

Cid tramped over, handed Yuffie and Vincent their drinks, and plopped down in the armchair between Yuffie and Vincent. "Sorry 'bout that. Got a call from the missus."

"Oh, yeah? What're you doing here without her?" Yuffie asked with mock suspicion.

"WRO business, as usual. When do I ever travel these days, 'cept for WRO business?" Cid took a sip of his drink. "'Least I'm all done. Headin' home tomorrow. What brings ya here?"

In between sips of the warm, spiced drink, Yuffie told the story for the third time: the war, her mother, and the Leviathan Materia. "I have three shrines to go. One of 'em is near here," she concluded. "How 'bout it, old man? Down to fight a big ol' boss like old times?"

"Hmph. I'm still sore from all the runnin' 'round I had to do last year," Cid grumbled.

"I don't think that was enough. Is that a dadbod you got there?"

"Shuddup!" he snapped again, pulling his coat tighter around him. "Can't go anyway. Told Shera I'd be back tomorrow."

"We can go hunting early tomorrow," Vincent supplied. "Come back by noon, then fly in the evening."

"Early?" Yuffie whined. "Why early?"

"Do you want to go alone?"

"No! Wait a second, did you say 'hunting'?"

"Yes."

"You always say the weirdest things!"

Cid took a sip. "Ah, why the hell not?" he asked, as if he hadn't heard them. "I'm here. You're here. Vince's here. We don't see enough of each other these days, us eight."

Yuffie shrugged. "We get together about once a year to save the world. This year, it's my turn."

"Hold it, missy. 'Far as I know, you only get to save Wutai."

"That counts for the world, don't it?"

After finishing their drinks, they went upstairs to sleep. Early the next morning, they met on the inn's first floor. "So, where's the poor doomed sucker?" Cid asked.

"You mean the shrine guardian? Uh…" Yuffie reached into her pocket and unfolded the map.

Cid peered over her shoulder and grabbed the map. Yuffie tried to snatch it back, but he yanked it out of reach. "What kinduva shit map is this?" he demanded. "Hand-drawn, Wutai's in the middle, the east n' north continents're too far apart, Wutai's too damn big! Ya won't find anythin' with a map like this!"

Yuffie grabbed at the map unsuccessfully. "That's exactly how big Wutai is! Everyone else draws it too small!"

Vincent took the map from Cid and examined it. "It looks like we need to go north. Cid, did you bring a hoverboard?"

They rode hoverboards north against the biting wind and flurries of snow. Yuffie forgot how much she hated the Great Glacier and its cold. After an hour's journey, she sped up and signaled Cid and Vincent to stop. "The guardian might sneak up on us. Like that spider from last time."

"What's that?"

Yuffie turned to Vincent, who was watching a figure approach them in the snow. It was a woman whose dark hair stood out starkly against the snow. Her skin was nearly as pale as her white dress. Vincent pulled out his gun, but couldn't seem to bring himself to raise it. "It can't be," he said uncertainly.

"Vincent, what're you seein'? I'm seein' Shera. Don't trust yer eyes!" Cid warned.

"It's a _yuki-onna_!" Yuffie warned. "A snow monster!"

Suddenly, the _yuki-onna_ opened its mouth. An icy fog poured out and crystallized around Vincent. "Vincent!" Yuffie turned to Cid. "Do you have a Fire Materia?"

"Me? Don't _you_ have all the Materia?"

The ice crystal exploded into flames and the Galian Beast emerged with a furious roar.

Yuffie gulped. "Okay! That works too!"

Cid spun his spear and struck the ground. His dragon materialized beside him, ready for combat. Yuffie looked at the dragon and back at the Galian Beast and had an idea. She reached into her pocket and placed the Leviathan Materia in a slot in her shuriken. Then she closed her eyes to call on Leviathan and waited. And waited. And waited.

"What the hell're you doin'?" Cid yelled from a distance. "This's _your_ monster!"

Yuffie glared at the Materia and plucked it out of the slot. "What's the use of havin' you if you ain't gonna work?" she demanded. When the Materia didn't respond, she stuffed it back in her pocket.

The Galian Beast and the dragon were attacking the _yuki-onna_ , who glided nimbly between them and breathed its icy breath on them to slow them down. Cid leapt in with his spear to give his dragon and the Galian Beast time to break free. Yuffie threw her shuriken at the _yuki-onna_ , drawing water. The _yuki-onna_ whirled on her, and she dodged its breath just in time.

After a few minutes of rotating attacks to keep the _yuki-onna_ between them, the _yuki-onna_ glided away from all of them, drew in a deep breath, and unleashed a ferocious blast of icy wind. Yuffie stumbled to the edge of the blast just in time, but her numb limbs tripped her. She struggled to stand up while the _yuki-onna_ advanced towards her.

With a howl from the Galian Beast, fiery orbs appeared around the _yuki-onna_ and blazed into white-hot flares that stopped the _yuki-onna_ in its tracks. Yuffie struggled to her feet and closed her eyes in concentration. When she opened her eyes, the world around her was bathed in blood-red light. Everything had slowed down, allowing her to see with perfect clarity every weakness, every possible angle of attack. She raced towards the _yuki-onna_ and circled around her, slashing repeatedly with her shuriken. The _yuki-onna_ turned this way and that, trying to keep up with her, but she was too fast. Finally, she jumped into the air, dragged her shuriken through the _yuki-onna_ 's body from head to toe, and jumped back. Time sped up again. The _yuki-onna_ gave a long, piercing scream as it dissolved into tendrils of life energy. When it disappeared, Kasumi was standing in its place. She frowned. "Your eyes are still red."

"Oops." Yuffie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She opened her eyes. The blood-red light was gone.

"Better. So, how did you like the New Year's celebrations?"

"The people in the street sang the Song of the Seasons, and I remembered…"

Her mother smiled. "That was your favorite lullaby when you were little."

"It was the last thing you ever said to me. Why?"

"Because I like that song."

Yuffie rolled her eyes. "Mom!"

"Because it's a song about our country. I worried that you wouldn't know what it means to be Wutaian. I wanted you to know what it feels like to be connected with the place where our people have lived for thousands of years. To be connected with our great history, our culture, and our ancestors."

"How was I supposed to get all that out of one song?"

"You did just now," Kasumi pointed out. "And now you know why you must keep Wutai together."

Yuffie thought about what she felt when she saw the lion dancers from the hill, and heard the singers' voices in the square. "Yeah. I think I'm starting to get it."

"Just two more shrines to go. You're almost there."

"See you next time." She turned to Cid and Vincent, who had reverted to his human form. "Let's head back!"

When they returned, Vincent, apparently tired from his transformation, declined to join Yuffie and Cid for afternoon drinks. Cid was curious about Yuffie's mission. "So yer mom asked ya to save Wutai," he said. "Why'd she do that?"

"Uh, because Wutai's in trouble?"

"But why'd she ask _you_?"

"Probably 'cause I'm her daughter?"

"That's it?"

"Whaddaya mean, 'that's it'? I'm the last Emperor's daughter too. How 'bout that?"

"That all ya got?" Cid stared into the fire. "Sometimes, when ya need somebody to do somethin', it ain't about who you are," he mused. "Sometimes ain't nobody give a damn 'bout that. What matters is what you believe an' what you can do. So you wanna save Wutai. How're ya gonna do that? You gotta lead. Can ya do that?"

"That's my dad's job," Yuffie muttered defensively.

"If yer dad's all for war, he ain't gonna call a truce 'less you convince him why fightin' ain't the answer. Can ya do that?"

"I can use All Creation. Even my old man can't do that!"

"What's that have anythin' to do with it?"

"That's the technique that beat Leviathan and Da-chao!"

"Can it make peace?" Cid glanced over at Yuffie and saw her glaring daggers at him. "Look, I ain't sayin' ya can't save Wutai. I'm just sayin', know what ya can an' can't do. That's all." He drained his glass and stood up. "I'm gettin' some shut-eye. Soon as I get up, we're leavin' for Rocket Town."

While he tramped upstairs, Yuffie slouched in her chair and thought sullenly, _Someone got all high and mighty ever since he saved the world from some measly dragons._

She didn't want to admit it, but he had a point. Her mother had raised the same issue back at the church in Midgar, and Yuffie had tried not to think about it then too. It was so much easier to think that all she had to do was summon Leviathan and everything else would work itself out. She wasn't like her father, who could command an army or a crowd of civilians with authority, or her mother, who kept the Empire together while Godo was leading the country into war.

 _I'm not like them. I can't be a politician. The only thing I'm good at is fighting._

Never one to sit and brood, she went outside for a walk. It was already dark: the winter night came especially early this far north. Standing in the square, she remembered the Wutaians' song and the woman who seemed to recognize her. Maybe she was a relative. After the war, so many of Yuffie's surviving relatives left Wutai that she lost track of who went where and who was who. But there were Wutaians all around the world, like the café owner in Kalm. Yuffie had just never bothered to look.

After enough time spent wandering around the streets, she realized that it wasn't that she never looked for Icicle Inn's Wutaians, but that they were good at hiding. Fortunately, she knew how to bring them out. She stood in the middle of a small plaza and began a martial arts form. It began simply and slowly, but soon accelerated into a jumping kick. The landing sent Yuffie skidding on the icy pavement, so she shortened and lowered her stances. She used the icy ground to guide her pivots. Now confident, she sped up the sweeping arm motions and, close to the end, executed the sweeping kick. She concluded the form with a bow.

"I knew it," said a woman's voice behind her in Wutaian.

Yuffie whirled around, and there she was: the middle-aged woman who seemed to recognize her last night. "Do you remember me?" the woman asked. "I am your Aunt Yingshuo. My late husband was your mother's brother."

Although Yuffie didn't remember her face, she remembered that her mother had a brother who was married with children. Yuffie never saw much of them because she rarely left the Palace when she was little, and when she began sneaking out, visiting her relatives was the last thing on her mind.

"You look like your mother," her aunt commented. "That's how I knew. But you have—"

"Dad's eyes. I know."

"I can't see what color your eyes are!" her aunt retorted. "I was going to say you have his skill in martial arts."

"Oh."

"Are you as smart as your mother was?"

"Uh… of course I am!"

"Good." Yuffie's aunt looked up at the sky. "We hear that Wutai is in trouble. Are you going to take your place as your father's daughter?"

Yuffie stared at the ground. After her conversation with Cid, she was even less sure what she was going to do when she returned home. "I think so. Whatever that means."

"Your mother felt the same away about becoming the Empress."

Yuffie looked at her aunt in surprise. "After she accepted the Emperor's offer of marriage," she continued, "she told me she was marrying him because she wanted to help him make Wutai a better place. But she did not know where she would start. Years later, she told me she found the answer."

"What was it?" Yuffie asked curiously.

"I don't know! I didn't ask her."

Yuffie sighed. She could hardly blame her aunt for not being interested in something that probably had to do with political theory.

"I can tell you that Wutaians all over the world are wondering what will happen," her aunt said. "We are watching what is happening in Wutai, because that will tell us whether we are one people."

Yuffie sighed. "Right. I'll try to figure that out."

"You will find the answer. You are the daughter of Lord Godo and Empress Kasumi."

 _Does that actually count for anything?_ Yuffie thought. She felt a snowflake brush her face and looked up. It was snowing again. " _Aiya_ ," her aunt sighed. "More snow. We moved here for the snow, but I don't like it anymore. I can feel the cold in my bones these days. I'm going home."

Yuffie stifled a giggle. Her aunt had turned into another middle-aged Wutaian lady. "Good night, Aunt Yingshuo."

"Good night, Your Imperial Highness, Xi'irh Gongzhu."

"That's not my title anymore," she reminded her aunt.

Her aunt called back, "But it is still who you are."

Yuffie listened to the snow crunching under her aunt's feet. When the sound faded in the distance, she returned to the inn.

 _What does a Princess of Wutai believe? What does she do?_

In the evening, she boarded the helicopter with Cid and Vincent. They reached Rocket Town late at night, landed at the WRO's airbase, and spent the night at Cid's house. Breakfast was cozy, with the five of them—Yuffie, Vincent, Cid, Shera, and baby Aria—crowded around the Highwind family's table. The chatter of the morning news anchors from the television filled the background, mostly ignored until one of the anchors announced breaking news from Junon: "Earlier this morning, a sea monster suddenly appeared just off the coast of Junon and began to attack a young lady on the beach. Fortunately, the young lady was able to fight off and defeat the monster. No one was injured."

During these comments, there was blurry footage of the would-be victim fighting the sea monster. For just a moment, the footage cleared up enough for Yuffie to recognize her friend, Yvonne. Yuffie scoffed and poked her food. _Yvonne beats one monster and gets on the news? How many did I beat in the last week?_

"The incident appears similar to one reported in Costa del Sol, also involving a monster that suddenly appeared from the ocean one night and attacked beachgoers until it was subdued. Scientists at the base of the WRO in Junon say they will investigate how both incidents happened and whether they are related."

After breakfast, Cid asked Yuffie, "You're goin' to Cosmo Canyon next, right?"

"Yeah. My phone says I'll get there late at night if I leave now."

"There's a train to Cosmo Canyon. You can take that," Shera suggested.

"Ababa," baby Aria agreed.

"A train? Since when?" asked Yuffie.

Shera looked at Cid. "A few years ago, right?"

He shrugged. "I don' remember."

"It's a nice route. It goes through the mountains and stops by Nibelheim. I think the trains leave every two hours."

"Where's the station?"

"The south side of town. You won't miss it."

Yuffie thanked Cid and Shera for having her, gathered her belongings, and left the house. Vincent followed her outside. "Wasn't that your friend on the news?" he asked.

Yuffie was busy checking directions to the train station. "Yeah."

"Does she have a Summon Materia?"

Yuffie froze. "Think about all the Summon Materia we had," Vincent continued. "Are you sure she doesn't have one of them?"

 _Is Yvonne trying to unseal a Summon Materia too?_ Yuffie thought. _S_ he remembered her short conversation with her friend in the Forgotten City. _She said her dad asked her to do something for Longhua. Is she going to give Longhua's army a fully powered Summon Materia?_

"Don't trust your friend," Vincent advised her. "And be careful."

During the train ride, Yuffie reconsidered. _Even if she has a Summon Materia, Dad has his best ninja collecting the rest. Besides, I have the Leviathan Materia. What's Yvonne's Materia against the rest of the Materia in the world, plus the full power of the Leviathan Materia?_

She relaxed and stared out the window, but the first part of the train route was in a tunnel under the mountains. So much for a nice ride.

Suddenly, the roaring in the tunnel stopped and the train car was flooded with sunlight. Yuffie squinted at the bright, snowy slopes of the mountains to the left. In the distance, she saw Nibelheim with its half-timbered houses and steep shingled roofs. The train slowed down as it approached the station. When it stopped to let passengers disembark and board, Yuffie peered out the window at the once-abandoned town. It was no city, but it was bustling with a life Yuffie had never seen before. What happened to transform it into a lively town just a few years after she roamed the abandoned streets in search of Deepground's secrets?

That evening, when the train pulled into the Cosmo Canyon station, Nanaki was waiting. "How'd ya know I was coming?" Yuffie asked.

"Vincent called me and told me everything," Nanaki responded. "He said he thought he would save you the trouble of telling the story again."

"That guy's a lot nicer than he pretends to be. Well, I would've called you earlier, but I keep forgetting you have a phone."

"It's because I have a flip phone, isn't it?"

Yuffie snapped her fingers. "That's totally it! You need an upgrade. You know what they call flip phones these days?"

"I would get a new one, but I can't use a touchscreen."

"Oh. I guess you can't." She laughed. "Poor Nanaki tries to keep up with technology, but technology just gets ahead of you."

They sat down at a table in the Starlet Pub to catch up—or rather, Yuffie sat at a table while Nanaki sat on the floor. "How was the train ride?" Nanaki asked.

"Pretty boring at first. It was awesome once we got out of the tunnel. Oh, and there was a stop at Nibelheim! Been there lately?"

"I was there last year. It's changed."

"Yeah. It looks like a real town now! D'you know what happened to it?"

"I'm not sure, but I think the train had something to do with it. People started coming back to Nibelheim and rebuilding it. It looks nice now."

Yuffie tried to imagine a train connecting Wutai, Longhua, and the three major towns along the imperial road. "Wutai needs a train," she concluded.

"What makes you say that?"

"Nibelheim came back to life because it got a train station." With her finger, Yuffie traced a map of Wutai on the table. "The only thing connecting Wutai and Longhua is a really old road with some sketch-af bridges, so—"

"What kind of bridges?"

"Never mind. What if we had a train that connected Wutai and Longhua, and some of the towns and villages along the way? Maybe we wouldn't feel like strangers."

Nanaki didn't answer. When Yuffie looked up at him, he was staring at her. "What?" she demanded.

"You've changed," he said simply.

"What's that have to do with… Never mind. D'you think it'd work?" Yuffie pressed.

He paused to think about it. "The terrain in Wutai is mountainous, isn't it? You'd have a hard time building a railroad through that."

"Dammit, Nanaki, you were supposed to tell me it was a good idea."

"I think it's a good idea. I just don't think it would be easy to do."

That night, she went upstairs to her room in Shildra Inn and fell asleep thinking about the world's longest train tunnel, from the south end of the Lotus River Valley to the end of the mountain range. In the morning, she met Nanaki in the inn lobby. "I thought we were meeting outside," she said.

Nanaki shuddered. "It's cold! And there's snow outside."

"I didn't know it snowed here," Yuffie commented, surprised. "Does it snow everywhere but Wutai?"

"It doesn't snow a lot here. In the afternoon it gets warm enough for most of the snow to melt. So where are we going?"

"The guardian's supposed to appear near water. Any water around here?"

"Besides the snow? There's an oasis to the east. We could try there."

Yuffie rode her hoverboard only as fast as Nanaki could run, which was not very fast because of the icy ground. "How far is the oasis?" she asked Nanaki.

"Just a little longer."

They arrived at the oasis, which was little more than a half-frozen pool with some barren trees around it. "This place gets an award for 'Most Depressing Oasis I've Ever Seen,'" Yuffie commented.

She took out the Materia and waited, but nothing happened. "Are we in the wrong spot?" Nanaki asked.

"I don't think so. The guardian should be here any minute now."

Nanaki looked up. "Watch out!"

Yuffie flipped backwards just as a large, otter-like monster landed on the spot where she had just been standing. It whirled around to face her, narrowed its fierce red eyes, and snarled. Guessing that this beast would attack at too close a range for her shuriken, she gripped the hilt of her katana. The beast leaped towards her. In a single, swift movement, she whipped her katana from its sheath, slashed, and let her momentum carry her forward out of the beast's path. While her back was turned, Nanaki raced to attack the beast. The two wrestled and clawed at each other until Nanaki broke free. Yuffie rushed in to take over. For its size, the monster was fast, managing to dodge many of Yuffie's attacks. Yuffie and Nanaki took turns attacking to avoid hurting each other.

As the battle went on, the beast seemed to become transparent. Soon it wasn't dodging Yuffie and Nanaki's attacks as much as it was letting the attacks pass through its body. When it attacked, its body became solid just long enough to land a blow before it became transparent again. Instead of dodging, Yuffie tried to strike at the exact moment its claws became solid, but the beast sent her flying backwards and tumbling across the dusty ground.

Nanaki bounded over to her. "Are you alright?"

She sat up, wincing. "I'm okay. How're we supposed to beat this thing?"

"I think its head is still solid. I'll try to attack it." Nanaki raced towards the beast and attacked it furiously, targeting its head. The ground below them exploded upon his final blow, sending the beast flying back. Nanaki turned to Yuffie. "It's all yours!"

Yuffie closed her eyes and concentrated. When she opened her eyes, her shuriken blazed with blue light. She jumped into the air and released her shuriken. It whirled around her, steadily gaining speed and light with each orbit. She sent it flying into the ground where the beast lay. She landed on her feet on the earth and stretched her hand out. The shuriken uprooted itself and whirled around the beast, faster and faster until even Yuffie's eyes could no longer follow it. It blazed brighter and brighter until the beast was engulfed in an explosion of blue light. When the light cleared, Yuffie's shuriken flew back into her waiting hand while the last of the beast's life energy returned to the Planet.

Yuffie's mother was standing where the beast had lain. Yuffie ran to her. "Mom," she said, "I ran into Aunt Yingshuo."

"Yingshuo- _neesan_?" Kasumi asked, surprised. "Where?"

"A town called Icicle Inn."

"How is she?"

"She told me something about you. She said that you married Dad because you wanted to make Wutai a better place, but you didn't know where to start. She said you found the answer later. What was it?"

Kasumi looked confused for a moment, as if unsure what Yuffie was asking. After a moment, her face lit up in understanding. "Memory."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"As part of our imperial duties, every morning your father and I would visit the library. We would read the records from the reigns of previous Emperors."

Yuffie shuddered. "That sounds like fun."

"We would remember what had been done, the good and the bad. We would talk about what could have been done in the past, and bring that knowledge to the imperial court to decide what we could do today. Because remembering—"

"Isn't just about reliving the past," Yuffie finished, thinking of Cloud's words to her in the Forgotten City. "It's about learning from yesterday so you can be a better person today."

She pulled the phoenix hairpin out of her pocket and showed it to her mother. Kasumi's eyes widened. "Did your father give it back to you?"

"Yeah. I think I know what it means now. I won't waste it. I promise."

Her mother's smile was radiant. "I think you're ready to go home."

"I think so too." Yuffie knew this was her cue to say goodbye until the next shrine, but the mention of her father had stirred her curiosity. "Before you go, I wanted to ask… have you been visiting Dad too?"

The smile disappeared. "No."

"Why not? He probably wouldn't mind seeing you again."

"Your father has something very important to do, and so do I. Seeing each other now would distract us from that."

She spoke as if it were an argument she had already had with herself, and the sadness in her mother's face said that there was nothing more to say about the subject. "Okay," Yuffie said. "Well, I'll see you at the last shrine."

Kasumi disappeared. Yuffie turned to Nanaki. "Where are you going now?" he asked.

"To the port! I have a ferry to catch."

They retraced their steps to the gates of Cosmo Canyon. "What are you going to do when you return to Wutai?" Nanaki asked.

"I don't know exactly yet," Yuffie admitted. "But I'm starting to figure it out. I'm gonna summon Leviathan and convince Dad and Minazuki to keep Wutai together." She took a deep breath for the last, most important part: "I'm gonna help lead Wutai."

"You grew up so fast," Nanaki commented enviously. "And in so little time."

"I don't got five hundred years to grow up," Yuffie reminded him. "I had to do it sometime."

He sighed. "I guess so."

"It'll be your turn someday."

"Someday." He turned towards the gates of Cosmo Canyon. "Good luck!"

Towards the end of the day, Yuffie arrived at the port just in time to catch the next ferry to Longhua. When the ferry left the harbor, Yuffie found her way to the bow. The sky and the ocean were fiery with the glow of the setting sun. _Xi'irh Gongzhu, Princess of the Evening Sun,_ Yuffie thought. _That used to be my title._ She pulled her mother's hairpin out of her pocket and watched it glimmer in the fiery light of the sun. _The sign of the Empress,_ she thought. _When Mom gave it to me before she died, and when Dad gave it to me with the Leviathan Materia, they were telling me they had faith in me. Faith that I'd remember who I used to be: the last Princess of Wutai._

As she made her way down to the cabin to take a nap, the pieces of a plan fell into place. _I'll come home. I'll stay out of Dad's sight because he'll want to use the Materia against Longhua. When the battle starts, I'll summon Leviathan so everyone will listen. I'll tell them why we have to stay united. I'll tell them the future of Wutai needs both the past and the present. I'll tell them we should be one people. We always were, and we always will be._

Smiling, Yuffie curled up on a cot and promptly fell asleep.


	9. Back in Time: Land of the Setting Sun

_The Empire began to fall long before your father rose to the throne. He knew this. It was the reason he married me. Together, we did everything we could, but there was only so much we could do to change the fate of the Empire when its people were already losing hope. It was like trying to stop the sun from setting. And it was at the sunset of Wutai that you were born, just before the festival of the first snowfall._

Kasumi woke from a deep sleep to the sound of knocking on her door. "His Majesty, the Emperor," an attendant announced from outside. In a daze, Kasumi sat up and blinked confusedly, wondering why her husband was visiting her so early in the morning.

The knocking repeated. "Your Majesty?" the attendant pressed.

"Come in," Kasumi called.

The doors opened to admit Godo. With his formal robes and his freshly trimmed beard, he was already prepared for the imperial court session. Realizing she had missed the morning reading session, Kasumi gasped. "My attendants didn't wake me up!"

Godo sat down by her side. "I told them not to. You didn't look well yesterday."

Kasumi sighed. He was much more attentive to her health than she was.

"How are you now?"

"I could be better," she admitted. She pressed a hand to her chest and winced. Realizing what this meant, she looked at Godo. From the expression on his face, she knew that the same thought had occurred to him. Fatigue and a sore chest were the earliest signs of her first two pregnancies.

Godo smiled sadly. "Kuniyoshi has sent us another child."

Kasumi felt a pang of grief at the sound of their second child's name. Kuniyoshi had been sickly since his birth. Despite the physician's efforts and his parents' prayers, the boy died at just a year old, leaving his older brother Farruo an only child.

Godo held out his hands and helped Kasumi to her feet. "We have an important meeting today."

"Our ambassadors came back from the West yesterday," she remembered. "How much time do I have?"

"About an hour."

She walked Godo to the doors. "Don't let the ambassadors into the throne room until I arrive," she instructed. Godo laughed. "You know how it is," Kasumi insisted. "Once they're in the room, everyone will start asking questions. It will all be over before I arrive."

"Then I'll keep them out of the room until you come," Godo promised.

"I'll get dressed as fast as I can."

After the Empress entered the throne room and sat next to the Emperor, the ambassadors entered the audience room to begin the account of their year in the West. They spoke of a strange city built of metal in the middle of a desert. There was neither day nor night there, because the city was full of light from Shinra Electric Power Company. Over the course of the year, the ambassadors found that Shinra was unlike any company they knew: it occupied the largest building in the city and had its own police force along with specialized military units. The ambassadors were eventually offered a meeting with Shinra's executives. President Shinra had heard stories of the glorious Empire and was eager to send his own representatives to the country, but first he wanted to make sure that the Emperor was willing to receive them.

After a short discussion, the Emperor, the Empress, and the scholar-officials agreed to receive Shinra's representatives. They elected to send two of the ambassadors back to Shinra to relay their message. Those ambassadors would return with Shinra's representatives.

With the court adjourned, Godo and Kasumi left the throne room. Outside, Godo murmured to Kasumi, "You seem worried."

"Something strange is happening out there," she responded. "A city in the middle of the desert, with a night as bright as day. A company with its own army. The sun is rising in the West—"

"And setting on our land," Godo finished with a sigh.

It wasn't just because of what they had heard about the Western company. After a brief period of stability, a shadow seemed to have fallen on the nation again. The troubles that plagued the Empire before Godo's reign returned. Thousands of people were leaving Wutai—not just the city, but the continent outright—to seek their fortunes elsewhere in the world. Some were moving west, others east. Still others, like Kasumi's brother and his wife, spoke of a land across the North Sea where snow still fell. At each of the imperial court sessions, there was an air of unease and powerlessness. Everyone knew that something was coming, something was happening, but they couldn't put a name to it.

"I know we agreed that there is no harm in letting Shinra come," said Kasumi. "But think of how much Wutai would change, if we did what they are doing in the West. When Farruo takes the throne, what will Wutai be like?" She looked down, imagining the child inside her. "The Wutai that this child grows up to see… what will it be like?"

Godo stopped walking and turned to her. "For the last hundred years, my ancestors have only left the Empire worse than when they found it. But you and I will leave it a better place. For Farruo and for this child."

There was a certain intensity in his eyes whenever he talked about the Empire. Kasumi noticed it early in their marriage, and it hadn't changed at all in the years they had been married. Her husband's hope gave her strength in difficult days, when there was so much to do that the mere thought of it exhausted her. And she knew that when he began to doubt whether the long years would all be worth it, she reminded him that he wasn't alone, that he would always have his wife to give him the will to keep fighting.

Shinra's representatives arrived in the seventh month. In spite of the stifling humid heat, the representatives were impressed with the city's beauty. They told the imperial court that they looked forward to learning more about Wutaian culture and continuing the productive dialogue they had with Wutai's ambassadors during the past year.

Three months later, on the fifteenth day of the tenth month, Kasumi and Godo's third child was born. It was just before Xiaoxue, the traditional start of the snow season when Wutai used to have snow. As with her first two children, Kasumi spent a month in recovery. At the end of the month, the baby received the name Yuffie, Princess of the Evening Sun. The following day, Kasumi returned to the imperial court and the Princess was placed in the care of an amah.

Nearly a year after their arrival, Shinra's representatives requested a private audience with the Emperor and the Empress. At this audience, they announced what must have been their original intention in coming to Wutai. During their tour of Wutai's lands, they had found the perfect spot for a mako reactor. With the cooperation of the Emperor and Empress, they hoped to help transform the city into a bustling metropolis like their own home in Midgar.

But when the Emperor saw the location they had marked on the map, his face darkened. It was near the sacred cliffs to the east, where the first _feng shui_ warrior proved his strength to Leviathan by mastering all creation. Shinra's representatives insisted that the reactor would not be an insult to the god, and that they simply wanted to help improve life for Wutai's citizens. The Emperor and Empress were not indifferent to their offer for a world with no more night, but they decided to postpone their decision. The representatives thanked the Emperor and Empress for their consideration and looked forward to their answer.

The Emperor made plans to send soldiers to the eastern cliffs to ensure that Shinra stayed away from the sacred grounds. He told Kasumi that he planned to send Farruo as well, explaining that he wanted the Prince to see the land sacred to Leviathan because it was the key to understanding where Wutai came from and who the people of Wutai were. After Farruo and the soldiers departed, the Emperor and the Empress talked the matter over with the imperial court. They decided that Shinra's offer could make Wutai a better place, but it would also allow Shinra a foothold in Wutai and make the nation dependent on the Western company. And it would desecrate the sacred land, the place where, with his mastery over nature, the first _feng shui_ warrior secured Leviathan's blessing for Wutai's people.

The day before the Emperor and Empress planned to give their decision to Shinra's representatives, the soldiers assigned to guard the eastern cliffs returned to the Wusheng bloodied and disheveled. On his back, one of the soldiers bore the lifeless body of the young Prince Farruo.

The soldiers reported that Shinra agents snuck onto the land and targeted the Prince. Shinra's representatives did not deny that they had sent their agents to scout the land, but pointed out that not one of the agents survived the attack. They insisted that the agents had not given orders to target the Prince, and that he must have died in the crossfire. Neither side could agree on anything except for the death toll. Enraged with Shinra's representatives, the Emperor ordered them to leave Wutai that very day. Two years of careful diplomacy between Wutai and Shinra completely disintegrated in a matter of days. With the support of the Wusheng and the imperial court, the Emperor and Empress decided to declare war on Shinra.

Several months later, autumn leaves wreathed An-xi Square in fiery glory as the imperial household saw the army off on the Palace steps. The nobles whispered that the Emperor looked like the reincarnation of his ancestor, the first Kisaragi Emperor. Kasumi agreed that he looked formidable in his armor emblazoned with the military crest of Leviathan and the imperial crest of the lotus, but that did nothing to lessen her unease.

The Emperor addressed the assembly in the square. "Today we march in memory of Our son Farruo, Prince of the Spring Dawn. We fight for the glory of Wutai and our guardian, Leviathan!" he declared. "May we return victorious, or else die in glory."

The crowd erupted into shouts of "Ten thousand years!" Amid the cheers, Godo bid Kasumi farewell and began the march out of the city.

After the soldiers' departure, the city was quiet. With Godo away, Kasumi's evenings were completely at her leisure. One evening, on a whim, she visited the nursery. The baby eagerly crawled over and pulled herself up on Kasumi's knee. Kasumi spoke to her, telling her how small and cute she was. At the sound of her mother's voice, the baby stared at Kasumi in wide-eyed, silent delight and reached up as if to touch Kasumi's face. _She knows my voice,_ Kasumi realized. _I rarely visit, but she remembers my voice._

She visited the nursery more often. When the baby learned how to walk, she toddled over to greet her mother as soon as she saw her in the doorway. She burst into the cutest giggles when Kasumi scooped her up into her arms. At night she would escape her caretakers to look for her mother and wailed until she was brought to Kasumi's room. Watching her daughter sleep peacefully next to her, Kasumi began to imagine what she would look like as she grew up, what kind of person she would be—and how Kasumi would be by her side to love her.

Kasumi soon fell into the habit of trying to figure out what color Yuffie's eyes were. They were dark, but she couldn't tell if they were violet like Godo's or dark brown like hers. Thinking the sun would help, she brought Yuffie outside, but the baby squinted reproachfully at her and rubbed her eyes, making it impossible to tell. Kasumi didn't know why she was so curious about it. Maybe it was because both of her sons had violet eyes. In any case, even in the sun Kasumi couldn't tell what Yuffie's eye color was.

Over the next few years, Kasumi watched Yuffie continue to grow. Godo came home every year. Each year, Kasumi looked forward to seeing him reunited with their daughter, but he could only ever return the little girl's innocent joy with a forced smile. When Kasumi finally confronted him, he responded that looking at Yuffie reminded him of her deceased brothers.

Kasumi met her husband's eyes evenly. "You may look at her and feel despair. But I look at her and I feel hope."

"Hope? For what?"

"That she will be Empress someday."

Godo simply looked at her in disbelief, but she continued, "You married the Empire's first female scholar-official in hundreds of years, and you are the strongest Emperor the Empire has seen since the Tenth Kisaragi Emperor. Is it so hard to believe that our daughter could be the Empress of Wutai?"

He didn't respond, but in his eyes she read a reluctant hope that encouraged her. _You will see,_ she thought. _I will raise her to have a heart just like yours—a heart for our nation._

In the fourth year of the war, at the end of Godo's annual visit, the imperial household gathered on the Palace steps to bid the Emperor farewell. In keeping with custom, the Empress bowed low to thank the Emperor for protecting the capital and the nation at the risk of his life. Godo responded with a bow of his own to thank Kasumi for ruling the Empire in his absence. As he turned away, she steeled herself, willing herself not to follow him. But before she knew what was happening, she found herself hurrying down the steps and running after him. At the sound of her steps, he whirled around, and they held each other, ignoring the disapproving murmurs of the imperial household and their young daughter loudly saying, "Ewww."

After a long moment, they reluctantly released each other. As Godo and his guards filed out of An-xi Square, Kasumi thought over and over, _Please come back safely!_

She devoted her time once more to her imperial duties and to her daughter. Shortly after the New Year, she took Yuffie to the top of Da-chao's statue. The winter cold still clung to the high mountain air, but the plum trees were beginning to bloom. Scattered amid the sweeping, tiled roofs of the city were trees swathed in pale pink. Yuffie loved the view so much that, wanting to get a closer look, she nearly ran right off the edge of the cliff. Kasumi grabbed her just in time. She sat the little girl on her lap and pointed out each of Wutai's landmarks by name: the bridges, the Lotus River, the Place of the Earth God's Repose, the Meridian Gate, the Pavilion of Heavenly Harmony, the Pagoda of Martial Might, the Palace of Earthly Peace. And when the sun began to set, she sang the spring verse from Yuffie's favorite lullaby, the Song of the Seasons. Yuffie sang along happily. For a child, she sang well, her voice clear and melodic in the crisp air. Kasumi almost believed that all was at peace, that her husband and her sons would be waiting for them at home, and that what they had all thought was the twilight of the nation was just a passing cloud.

Several months later, reports of a deadly disease throughout the city reached the Palace. After some investigation, the court physicians deduced that it was coming from the river. After they sent instructions throughout the city to boil the water before drinking, the number of fatalities decreased. The disease was just beginning to recede when Kasumi began to feel constant, sharp pains in her abdomen. Thinking it was temporary, she ignored it. But then she began to feel nauseous and weak, and in a matter of weeks she could no longer walk. Her physician gave her medicines of all kinds, but as she lay watching the fading leaves fall from the trees and the mist rise from the pond in the garden, and as the cold began to creep into the palace, the gravity of her condition sank in: she was not going to recover.

One evening, she woke up and saw her daughter sitting by her side. "Mama," Yuffie said the moment Kasumi opened her eyes, "where are you going?"

 _I'm dying. The physician wouldn't have let her visit me otherwise._ Kasumi fought her tears and smiled. "I'm going to visit your grandparents," she said. "They want to hear all about you."

"Can I go too?"

"No, sweetie," Kasumi said gently. "You have to stay here."

Yuffie pouted and whined, "Why?"

"You have to train hard and become strong like your father."

"Why?"

"Because…" Kasumi was about to make something up, the way she did when the little girl persisted for too long. But looking at her daughter this last time, she thought of what she had discovered on that long-ago night of Tanabata. She recalled her silent promise to her husband, to raise a daughter who would have a heart like his. She remembered Yuffie's joy when she saw Wutai from the height of Da-chao's statue. And she realized what she wanted to give to her daughter as her last gift.

She reached for the hairpin that Godo had given her years ago, bearing the sign of the Empress, and pressed it into Yuffie's small hands. "Because our people need you," she finished.

Yuffie looked at the hairpin and back at her in confusion. "Now listen carefully," Kasumi instructed. "I'm going to sing to you one last time."

She sang the fourth verse of the Song of the Seasons:

" _Mist rises from the river_

 _Where fiery leaves lie fallen_

 _As I walk along the twilit riverbank_

 _Singing of winter evenings._ "

Before she could start the fifth verse, Yuffie interrupted, "Mama, I can use _feng shui dao_. Can I show you?"

Kasumi smiled weakly. "Not now, sweetie. Mama's tired. Next time."

"Good night, Mama."

"Good night, sweetie."

For the last time, she gazed into her daughter's eyes. _Violet._ _Just like her father's eyes._ As the caretakers ushered Yuffie out of the room, her eyes burned with tears. _Remember me. Remember that your mother loved you._

The next evening, Kasumi opened her eyes when the door slid open and Godo came in. She stared at him wide-eyed, silent, and afraid that it was a dream. But when he hurried to her side, took her hand in his, and placed it against his cheek, and she felt the solidity of him and the familiar gentleness of his touch, she knew he was finally home. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I meant to come home as soon as I heard you were sick."

He looked as if he had aged ten years: his usually handsome appearance was unkempt and there were shadows under his eyes. Beneath her fingertips Kasumi felt the raised ridge of a scar. "You're hurt," she whispered, suddenly realizing that something terrible had kept her husband away. "What happened?"

The story was short but devastating: Shinra brought in reinforcements, one of whom was particularly vicious. This silver-haired soldier massacred Wutai's forces at Longhua and killed the Master of Weapons, the second strongest warrior in all of Wutai. Wutai's army was regrouping at Pusa Ding. Kasumi breathed a sigh of relief. "That's still far. Are you going back soon?"

"I'll stay as long as I need to. Chekhov is covering for me in the meantime."

"It won't be long." Kasumi's eyes burned. "I've already said goodbye to Yuffie. You came just in time for me to say goodbye. Now…" She swallowed her tears and took a deep breath. "Promise me something. After I die, you will go on living."

Godo's face was pained. "I can't. I can't live without you."

"Whether or not you think you can, you must. For our people. For Yuffie."

"I found Yuffie playing with this." Godo reached into his pocket and pulled out Kasumi's hairpin. "Why did you give it to her?"

"Because she is your heir. She will be the Empress one day."

He shook his head. "Forget about the future. What about today?" he asked, his voice breaking. "What about you and me?"

"Now is not the time to talk about us," she said softly. "If there was ever such a time, we missed it."

"Please don't talk like that. You will live. And I will stay here until you recover."

 _I'm not going to recover,_ she wanted to protest, but in her imagination she saw herself and her husband with their daughter, free from the cares of war and illness. Her heart became full of unbearable hope for that future, somewhere on the other side of the pain of the present, and she thought desperately, _I want to live!_

The next day, her illness returned in full force. Her head swam with nausea and she writhed with excruciating pain in her abdomen. When the blood rose to her throat and she began to retch, she urged Godo to leave the room, but he stayed to hold her when it was over.

The following day, the nausea subsided and the terrible pain dwindled to a dull ache. Kasumi and Godo spent the day talking about what they would do when she recovered, as if they were a commoner's husband and a commoner's wife, as if there were no war for Godo to return to. At the end of the day, Kasumi remembered that Yuffie had wanted to show off her new _feng shui_ technique, so she asked her attendant to bring Yuffie to visit her early the next morning, before her daily training. Then Kasumi turned to Godo and asked him to help her lie down. "Are you going to sleep already?" he asked as he gently lowered her onto the bedding. "It's only sunset."

"I want to wake up in time," she responded. "I sleep so much these days. If I'm not awake by sunrise, will you wake me up?"

"Of course."

She looked at Godo sternly. "Promise you won't let me sleep in."

He smiled and pressed her hand. "I promise."

She smiled up at him and closed her eyes.

She dreamed that she was falling, but slowly, as if through water. Faint, distant voices called to her. She recognized her father's voice and a woman's voice that must be her mother's. _Come home, Kasumi,_ they called. _It's time to come home. It's been so long._

 _My husband is going to wake me up soon_ , Kasumi told them. _And I want to see my daughter again._

Again and again they called her, but she resisted. Then she heard other voices, all blending together in a confusing array. _Wutai has fallen,_ some were saying. _Night has fallen on our land._

 _The imperial court is no more,_ other voices added. _The Lotus Throne stands empty in the silence of the Palace._

Still other voices had more to add. _The ancient city is fading. We no longer celebrate the old festivals. People bow their heads in submission to the West._

 _This is a dream,_ Kasumi thought. _It will all be over when I wake up._

 _The empire in the West has fallen,_ a new voice announced. _But a shadow is rising in Wutai. It is the revenge of Leviathan. Long has the Water God sought to reclaim his kingdom from his nemesis the Earth God. Now, at the end of the age, he prepares to strike, to drag the land back into the ocean whence it came._

"What are you talking about?" asked a woman's voice. For some reason, her voice was clearer than the others, as if it came from outside the dream.

 _The destruction of Wutai is foretold in our oldest legends. Leviathan, the Destroyer, will bring Wutai to an end._

"That can't be right," the woman's voice insisted. "I wonder if Yuffie knows anything about this."

At the sound of her daughter's name, Kasumi woke up and saw a young woman standing in front of her. She had green eyes and long, braided hair. "Oh, hello! Are you Yuffie's mother?" she asked. "You look like her."

Kasumi looked down. Blue-green points of light coalesced to form her body. "Yes," she answered. "Where is this? Is this Heaven?"

"Sort of."

With a pang of grief, Kasumi imagined her husband trying to wake her, shaking her gently and calling her name. "I wasn't ready to go," she whispered.

"I know," the young woman murmured sympathetically. "Death never comes at the right time."

There was some mystical quality about her: the way she was like a light in this dream-like darkness. "Are you the Empress of Heaven?" Kasumi asked.

The young woman laughed. "No, just her maid."

Kasumi looked around, but there was nothing but darkness and glowing blue-green tendrils around them. "My two sons died young," she said. "Are they here too?"

"Sons?" the young woman repeated in surprise. "I didn't know Yuffie had brothers!"

"One died before she was born. The other died when she was just a baby."

The young woman shook her head sympathetically. "They would have appeared at the sound of your voice if they hadn't returned to the Planet." She introduced herself. She had a strange name that Kasumi couldn't pronounce. "I'm looking for souls that haven't returned to the Planet yet," she explained. "You appeared when I said your daughter's name. You must still be attached to her."

"Do you know her?"

"I traveled with her for a while."

"What is she like?"

"Um… she's very cheerful. She has a lot of energy."

The careful tone of her voice spoke more than her words. _What kind of person did my daughter turn out to be?_ Kasumi wondered. Suddenly she remembered her dream. "I have dreamed of voices," she said. "My people have an ancient legend that the god Leviathan will destroy Wutai one day. The voices told me that this would happen."

The young woman frowned. "I have heard those voices too."

"Has it already happened?"

"No."

"Is there any way we can stop it from happening?" When the young woman hesitated, Kasumi pressed, "Can I speak with my daughter? Maybe she can stop it. It cannot be the will of the Empress of Heaven for our people to die."

The young woman took a deep, slow breath, as if she were thinking. Finally, she smiled at Kasumi. "We'll go to find your daughter in a moment. First let me tell you what I know about her."

 _I tell you this not because I think you will be what I want you to be, but because I want you to know the whole story before you decide what you want to be. It is my story—but it is also yours, because you are my daughter and I am your mother, and the bond between us is stronger than death. You can still choose to leave the past behind and live your life however you wish—but you can also choose to lead our people into the dawn. You can be the Princess who escaped destiny—but you can also be so much more. You, my daughter, can be our people's last hope_.


	10. The Destroyer

Longhua was different.

Yuffie couldn't tell what it was. Maybe it was the gun-wielding soldiers patrolling the streets. Maybe someone changed the lighting of the enormous metal statue of Leviathan to make the shadows harsh. Or maybe it was just that she had a new perspective on life.

While she braced herself on the rail of the brightly lit docks and waited for the nausea to pass, she saw a large but loosely packed crowd gathered in the seaside plaza with Leviathan's statue. Curious, Yuffie made her way into the crowd.

"Leviathan, protect us."

"May the Water God give us victory over our enemies."

"May our troops march with Leviathan's protection."

Yuffie heard these prayers over and over and narrowly avoided smacking into people when they bowed unexpectedly. One figure standing stock-still and staring wide-eyed and pale-faced at the statue caught her eye. "Yvonne?" she called. She ignored the annoyed glares when her raised voice interrupted the hushed, prayerful atmosphere. "What're you doing here?"

Yvonne seemed to stare past her, her dark blue eyes standing out starkly against her pale face. "You okay?" Yuffie asked. "You look sick."

Yvonne's eyes came into focus. "You don't look so good either."

"I just got off the ship. You know how it is with me. When'd you get back?"

"Today. I don't know how long I've been standing here. When I got back, my dad…"

"Did something happen?"

She hesitated. "He asked me to do something…"

Yuffie gave up. "Whatever it is, it's gonna be okay. Let's go to Wade's. Maybe you just need some rest."

She called Wade, who was happy to have them both over. Curled up on the couch that night, she listened to Yvonne's breathing from the floor. She seemed to have fallen asleep. Suddenly she remembered Vincent's warning that Yvonne might have a Summon Materia. She thought of searching Yvonne's belongings, but hesitated. _She's my friend. I'll just ask her in the morning._

In the morning, Wade told Yuffie that Yvonne had left for Wutai. On the journey north, Yuffie pushed her hoverboard to its limit, plunging through the forest province of Pusa Ding, past the lake in the province of Tayuan, and through the twisting mountain paths of Xiantong's mountains. Darkness fell, and with it the chill of the winter night. On the last mountain overlooking the Lotus River valley, Yuffie noticed many small lights, like the floodlights of a camp. Continuing down the road, she saw that guards were standing in the middle of the road. Judging by their armor, they were Longhuan soldiers. "Stop!" one of them called, aiming a gun at Yuffie.

She rode her hoverboard up to them. "I'm just passing through."

"Access to Wutai is restricted. We're going to have to detain you," the guard informed her.

"Ha! I'd like to see you try! D'you even know who I am?"

"No."

"I am Yuffie Kisaragi, the last Princess of Wutai, rightful commander of the Wusheng, and master of the Lev—"

She swallowed the words "Leviathan Materia" just in time, but struggled to think of a substitute.

"Lev… levitating… skateboard."

The guard was unimpressed. "Drop your weapons. We're taking you into custody."

"What's going on here?" a familiar voice asked.

Takuji Minazuki emerged from the shadows. His eyes widened. "Yuffie Kisaragi? Lower your weapons," he ordered the guards, who reluctantly obeyed. He turned to Yuffie. "If you want to pass through our camp on the way to Wutai, I'll make sure no one stops you."

"Uh… thanks?" she said, unsure what to make of this. "That's… nice of you?"

While Minazuki escorted her along the road, she looked up at the Longhuan army camped high on the slopes of the mountain. "How long have you been here?" she asked.

"Only a few days. We're waiting for an attack from Wutai. We have no intention of making the first move."

"You wouldn't call this a first move?"

Minazuki was silent until they reached the stretch of the road leading down into the Lotus River valley. The slope was illuminated with lights attached to tall, bulky machines. "What're those?" Yuffie asked.

"Turrets," answered Minazuki. "The latest technology from the WRO's weapons department. Not that your Commissioner knows about them, of course. For all his noble heart, it is not hard to buy his staff's loyalty. Or his weapons."

Yuffie stared at him incredulously. "You'd do all this for water?"

"Water? This is no longer about water. Like any good war, it turned into something much more." He stared in the direction of Wutai. "You are too attached to the ancient city. You live in a labyrinthine maze of hovels, never dreaming that this is what holds you back from true progress! I ordered the razing of the old Longhua only because I wanted to build a great new city in its place. Just as the floodwaters of Leviathan destroy only to begin anew, we only want to destroy Wutai to remake it in the image of the modern world: the age of technology and progress."

"I like the new Longhua, but the old Longhua was nice too." Yuffie tried to remember. "There was a row of wooden buildings along the shore, and a _torii_ gate further out in the water. There were temples to Leviathan just outside town. The Minazuki family used to have a castle. All of that disappeared when you built the new city."

"It was a mess," Minazuki remarked contemptuously. "Everywhere it smelled like fish. In the summer the water reeked. The modern world has no place for old-fashioned villages like that. We will destroy the past and scatter the ashes to the wind. It is the only way Wutai will survive the new age."

Yuffie looked up at him defiantly. "I won't let you destroy Wutai!"

"I expected no less from Lord Godo's daughter," he replied. "And I suggest you go, before my guards change their minds about letting you pass through."

Yuffie stepped back onto her hoverboard and sped down the mountain. She continued along the imperial road until she could just see the torches along the city walls. She reached into her pocket to retrieve the Leviathan Materia, but a flash of light in her peripheral vision caught her eye. Against a faint, bluish green glow, she saw a familiar silhouette. "Yinying?" she called, forgetting to call Yvonne by her Western name.

Her friend whirled around, holding a blood-red Materia. A ghostly serpentine dragon rose up from the ground behind her. She pointed behind Yuffie. "Look out!"

Yuffie turned around. There was a translucent yellow figure standing behind her. It looked mostly human except for its four arms. In fact, Yuffie realized, it looked like Da-chao. Curious, she looked up at the figure's serene face. Was he trying to tell her something?

The earth beneath her burst into a small explosion of pebbles and dirt, sending her stumbling backwards with a yelp. She shook her fist at the figure. "You wanna fight? I'll give ya a fight!"

She wrapped her hand around the hilt of her katana, rushed forward, and slashed through the figure. The blade passed through the translucent body like loosely packed earth, but the gash promptly healed over. Startled, Yuffie narrowly dodged the next small explosion beneath her. She cycled between all of her weapons and fighting styles: shuriken, katana, karate, and throwing knives, but nothing left so much as a mark. The earth quaked in increasingly violent tremors, and boulders rose up from the ground and flew at her. Through it all, the yellow figure stood where he had first appeared, his expression infuriatingly serene. Yuffie swore he was secretly laughing at her.

She stole a glance over her shoulder to see what Yinying was doing, but her friend seemed to be struggling just as much as her. When she turned back to the yellow figure, each of his four arms was pointing in a different direction. Four piles of earth rose in each direction and burst into fragments of rock. Yuffie squinted. In the yellow light emanating from the four-armed figure, she saw four stone giants. She sent her shuriken flying around all four of them, but the whirling blades bounced off harmlessly.

The nearest giant drew a boulder up from the ground and hurled it at her. She dodged just in time. The giants' brothers began to hurl boulder after boulder at her. On top of that, their immense weight made the ground shake beneath her, making it difficult for her to keep her balance. In the darkness, she tripped and fell sprawling onto the ground. She threw herself to the side just in time to avoid the stone giant's fist smashing into the ground once, twice, three times. Then she rolled to her feet and started running again. _I need a Limit,_ she thought. _But if one of those giants gets to me, I'm finished._

Suddenly she had an idea. She changed course, ran towards the giants, and leaped onto one of them. She slipped out of the way as one of the other giants smacked the one she was on. While the giant stumbled, she hung on for dear life. It recovered its balance and shook so violently and suddenly that she didn't have time to tighten her grip. She flew off the giant's back and landed in the grass. When she sat up, dazed, her left arm was afire with pain so intense that she clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. _Well, at least I got my Limit,_ she thought grimly.

In the darkness, the stone giants looked around blindly for her. Now was her chance. She struggled to her feet as violet light blazed around her. The plants around her withered and turned black. From where it lay, her shuriken flew into her waiting hand and began to spin. Water glowing brilliant blue gathered around the shuriken. Prompted by the light, the stone giants spotted Yuffie and lumbered towards her, but time slowed to a crawl for them. She darted around them, slashing and slicing, her shuriken pulsing with the strength of water thousands of times that of a raging waterfall. They swiped their huge stone arms, trying to catch her, but she was much too fast. By the time they began to crumble into lifeless pieces of stone, she still had plenty of power left in her Limit. She turned to the yellow figure in the distance, sped towards him, leaped into the air, and hurled her shuriken down at him. An enormous burst of light and water surrounded him. When Yuffie landed and waited for the light to clear, the figure smiled at her serenely and began to dissolve into yellow light.

She felt a drop of rain on her head and looked up. A faintly glowing mist just above her let fall a gentle rain that eased the fiery pain in her arm. When she squinted in front of her, she saw it just for a moment: a familiar smiling face with bright green eyes. She smiled back gratefully.

When the rain ended, Yuffie's mother appeared. Yuffie beamed at her, but she looked anxious. "Something's wrong," she called. Her image flickered. "Do you still have the Leviathan Materia?"

She vanished. Yuffie turned to Yinying, who was holding the glowing blood-red Materia in her hand while the ghostly serpentine dragon dissolved into blue light behind her. "Yinying!" Yuffie called. "Is that mine?"

Yinying inserted the Materia into a slot in the hilt of her saber. "It was."

"What do you mean, 'was?'"

She held up her saber and stared intently at the glowing Materia. A blue light enveloped her. "I'm the Master of the Leviathan Materia. The one who traveled the world to unseal its power was me."

"What? You can't just take credit for—"

"I'm sorry I had to take it from you, but this is the way it has to be. Wutai has to be destroyed." She turned to face the city. "This is a society that exists only for the rich to do whatever they want. It's a society that lets noblemen like my father fuck whoever they want, then blames the mothers of their bastard children."

"Seriously? You're gonna destroy the whole city just because your dad was an asshole?"

Yinying turned around. "Yes. Because my father is Takuji Minazuki."

"Now I really don't get it. You're mad at him, but you're taking it out on Wutai?"

"He's not the one to blame! He's trying to build a better society in Longhua. He asked me if I wanted to change Wutai. And he said destroying it is the only way to change it."

"And you _believe_ that crap?"

"I do," Yinying declared fiercely. "Everything the ancient city represents is corrupt!"

"Wait, what does it represent? I don't get it!" Yuffie exclaimed. "Wutai is just home. Why's it have to represent anything?"

Yinying looked conflicted. Yuffie continued, "Remember what it was like growing up here? The New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival. The plum blossoms in spring. Remember martial arts training in the morning, and playing in the river? That doesn't represent anything! Wutai is just our home, and home to Wutaians around the world. Sure it has problems, but that doesn't mean we have to destroy it!"

Yinying looked at her, clearly torn. Yuffie approached slowly and held out her hand. "Yinying…"

The blue light was still blazing around Yinying. Her hand hovered over the Leviathan Materia—but in a flash, her gaze hardened again. She whirled around and pointed her saber at the city. "An-xi Square will be the first to go!" she declared. Water rose from the ground in an enormous wave and rushed towards the city.

"No!" Yuffie jumped onto her hoverboard and sped off. The wave reached the city walls before she did, but she sped ahead, thinking only of how she had to stop the water before it reached the heart of Wutai. She leaped off her hoverboard the moment she passed the Meridian Gate into An-xi Square. Raising her hands against the enormous tidal wave, she tried to summon the strength to perform her final Limit. But she couldn't do it so soon after Doom of the Living. The last thing she remembered before the water swallowed her was the terrible roaring and crashing of the waves tearing the heart of the city to shreds.

* * *

Yuffie opened her eyes to the flickering light of a lantern and the faint sound of rumbling and muffled voices above. Gradually, her vision cleared enough for her to distinguish the face of her father, who was sitting by her side. She sat up. "Dad!"

From his stony expression, she knew that something was wrong. She looked around. In the dim lantern light, she vaguely recognized her surroundings. "This is the prison under the armory, isn't it?" she asked. "Why are we here?"

"I am here because the Wusheng are preparing the army for battle. You are here because you will have no part in it."

"Why?"

"Why?" Godo repeated furiously. "You use Leviathan's power to destroy Wutai and you dare ask me 'why'?"

"It wasn't me!"

"We found you in the middle of the square—"

"I was trying to stop the wave!"

He stood up, grabbed the lantern, and stormed towards the door. Yuffie jumped to her feet. "I'm not done with you!" she shouted.

"I am!"

But Godo stopped at the door. "Your mother had high hopes for you," he said without turning around. "She thought you could lead Wutai one day. She was wrong."

"She wasn't wrong! I came home to help you lead!"

"Why would you change your mind? Why, when nothing has ever mattered to you?"

"Because Wutai has always mattered to me! And because…" Yuffie hesitated. "Because Mom came back from the Lifestream to talk to me."

"No one can come back from the dead." The anger in her father's voice was tinged with pain. "Not even your mother."

"She came back because she knew you needed my help!"

"You don't know her. You were too young to remember her when she died."

"I remember her saying goodbye," Yuffie retorted. "She said I had to be strong because our people would need me one day. That's why I came home!"

Godo slammed his fist against the door. "Enough!" He turned. "I don't know what you think you were doing over the last two weeks. All I know is this: your mother would never let you betray Wutai!"

He stormed out of the room and slammed the door shut, leaving Yuffie in complete darkness.


	11. The Protector

Yuffie ran to the prison door and kicked it with all her strength, only to yelp in pain: it was a heavy wooden door, not a thin shoji door. She sank to the floor, clutching her throbbing ankle. _This is always my thanks for trying to help Wutai,_ she thought bitterly. _Dad blames me for something I didn't do and locks me up. Why the hell did I bother?_

She listened to the sounds coming from above her. They were the sounds of war: the tramping of soldiers' boots on the floor, the clinking and clanging of weapons and armor, the muffled muttering of voices male and female, old and young. For some of them, this would be their first war; for others, their second. For some of them, it would be their last.

 _I might as well get some sleep before I try to break out again._ Yuffie lay down on the packed dirt floor, closed her eyes, and dreamed of colors and voices from the past.

* * *

 _The Da-chao Materia has returned to the earth that birthed it. Now the Earth God awakens, and with him the memory of the land._

 _Your nation began in war._

A man blazing with red fire stood on the black cliffs before an enormous serpent—and then a woman wreathed in violet energy faced off against a four-armed giant in a yellow forest.

 _In the First Age, your people were careful. They planted the seeds of the nation. But very soon, they nurtured it into an Empire._

There was the first Palace of Earthly Peace at the head of An-xi Square, surrounded by yellow leaves. At the top of the steps a king robed in scarlet and gold looked out over an iron-clad army. This army swept into towns and villages, declaring the supremacy of the Emperor, the Son of Heaven. Along a gleaming white road, merchants and tribute-bearing peasants streamed towards the looming gates of the capital.

 _After a devastating war, the fire of the First Age faded into the embers of the Second Age. Yet even with a powerless Emperor on the throne, your people never forgot the thrill of the battlefield._

By day, armies of samurai and soldiers stained the earth with blood. By night, lords sleeping soundly in their castles woke with a dying scream while ninjas disappeared into the shadows.

 _It was inevitable that the general of the imperial army should come to want the throne for himself. And so began the fierce majesty of the Third Age._

In the mountains, a violet-eyed general led an army towards a fortress, where an Emperor standing atop the fortress walls frantically tied his sash around his neck. Then the violet-eyed soldier, now the Emperor, stood on the steps of the Pagoda of Martial Might, the new head of An-xi Square. On his golden imperial robes was a new crest: the Emperor's lotus with the general's dragon. He walked through the courtyards of the dojo, watching his soldiers train the city's children to be warriors ready to defend the nation at all times. He stopped to watch a young woman sparring against a much taller, stronger man. The woman wore the hair ribbon marking her as the Princess, the Emperor's daughter, whose status did not exempt her from the mandate of military service.

 _And just as even the sharpest blade dulls, the Emperors grew weak, and the one that was strong was quickly cut down by the West. But the West could not touch the roots of the Empire. And so the old spirit of the age still lives._

In the darkness of the night, Godo led Wutai's army through the mountains while Minazuki sat on the slopes with Longhua's soldiers.

 _Just as in war your nation began, in war it will end. And when the flood is over, will there be anything left of the nation to enter a new age? That is for you and your people to decide._

* * *

Yuffie woke up with a yelp when a hard object pushed into her side. Sleepily, she reached into her pocket to remove the offending object.

It was a Summon Materia.

Yuffie sat up with a start. The rust-red Materia in her hand gave off a brilliant golden glow. _Yinying may be a ninja, but even she can't pickpocket me in my sleep,_ she thought. _This is the Materia I took around the world._ _If Yinying has the Leviathan Materia, what's this?_

She awakened the Materia. It pulsed with yellow light. There was silence for a moment, and then loud creaking from all around. The columns and walls sprouted with fresh green shoots, and the packed floor bloomed with tiny flowering plants. "Da-chao," Yuffie breathed. "The lost Materia."

 _The priestess who stole the Da-chao Materia survived. She must have escaped to Longhua and… gave the Materia to the Minazuki family. Maybe that's how Yinying got it. Minazuki told Yinying to go to Wutai to steal the Leviathan Materia. She tried to steal it from Dad when he first gave it to me. Then she attacked me in the mountains, stole the Leviathan Materia, and left the Da-chao Materia in its place so I wouldn't know. And that's why it didn't work when I tried to summon Leviathan back at the Great Glacier._

A crash snapped her out of her thoughts. The heavy wooden door had fallen and was sprouting branches. Yuffie dashed out. A swiftly growing tree had opened a hole in the ceiling, allowing her to climb up into the armory, or what used to be the armory. Now it was a sprawling mass of trees and vines. Amid the wood and greenery, she caught a glimpse of a five-point shuriken: Nemesis. Yuffie had found it in the sunken Gelnika on the other side of the world, so it was hers. She grabbed it and slipped out of the armory and into the forest outside. In the darkness of night, she found the road leading to An-xi Square. As she walked, she thought about where to go next, where she could best avoid the war. She could skirt the battlefield and travel all the way to Longhua. Even if the ferries were suspended, she could sneak onboard a cargo ship in the harbor. Then she could make her way to the WRO headquarters and live the life she wanted: one in which she could choose her own adventures, not get forced into wars by her parents.

She reached An-xi Square. The moonlight was faint, but she could clearly see that the Pavilion, the Pagoda, and the Palace were all destroyed, reduced to massive heaps of smashed timbers, crushed stone, and shattered roof tiles. Columns, rafters, and pieces of shoji walls lay scattered on the pavement. Yuffie sank to her knees in shock. The three great monuments that had kept silent watch over Wutai for centuries were gone, destroyed in an instant. _Just like the old Longhua with its old houses and temples. Just like East Lake._

Yuffie picked her way through the ruins to the center of the square. Past the Meridian Gate, she could see the rest of the city intact. _But not for long. Yinying and Minazuki will come back for the rest of the city once they're finished with Wutai's army._

She looked at Nemesis with the Da-chao Materia gleaming in its slot. _It's not too late._ _I can still change the story._

She began to make her way out of the square, but stopped when she remembered that her mother hadn't stayed after the battle with the last guardian. Could she appear again? "Mom?" she asked uncertainly.

There was no response, so Yuffie decided to try the one person she knew who could cross the border between life and death. "Aerith?" she said. "Can you help me out?"

A voice echoed around her. "You picked a good place to ask. The Lifestream runs very close to the surface here."

She looked around, remembering the old story about An-xi Square, the Place of the Earth God's Repose. "This is where our ancestors met Da-chao. Maybe that's why. So can I talk to my mom here?"

Yuffie's mother appeared, this time dressed in the yellow robes of the Empress. Yuffie showed her Nemesis with the Da-chao Materia in its central slot. "Mom, this is the Da-chao Materia. Longhua has the Leviathan Materia. Did you know?"

"Not at all. The Da-chao Materia has been lost for hundreds of years."

Kasumi surveyed the ruins with a stricken face. "I'm sorry," Yuffie said, ashamed. "I tried to stop it."

Kasumi shook her head sadly. "It isn't your fault. The voices of the Lifestream warned that Leviathan would destroy Wutai. I thought that you could summon Leviathan and use his power for good. I should have known that others would stop at nothing to use his power for destruction."

Yuffie remembered her conversation with Minazuki beneath Leviathan's statue at Longhua. "Minazuki told me Leviathan used to be called 'The Destroyer.' And Da-chao used to be called 'the Protector.' Maybe Da-chao can still save Wutai."

"You might be right. Our people forgot about Da-chao after his Materia was lost," Kasumi mused. "Maybe it's finally time we remembered him."

"Got it." Yuffie smiled at her mother. "I have a good feeling about this."

"Do your best," said Kasumi, smiling back.

After her mother disappeared, Yuffie turned to the Meridian Gate and ran into the street. Though it was night, the city was restless. People were packing their belongings and fleeing north to the mountains. A distressed woman lamented to her husband, "Leviathan has betrayed us. The city is finished."

Yuffie stopped and opened her mouth to speak, but the woman's daughter spoke up. "Mother, if they destroy the city, we'll rebuild it again. This is our home and it always will be."

"The city will live ten thousand years!" called a young man across the street.

"Ten thousand years." The murmur picked up among the people. Yuffie looked around, her heart filling with the same emotion she'd felt when she saw the Wutaian singers at Icicle Inn. _If the people have hope, the city will survive. Wutai will survive._

She ran the rest of the way through the city and stopped just outside the South Gate, ignoring the guards' warnings. Without her hoverboard, it would take just over two days to reach the south end of the valley, where Longhua's army was camped. She had spent the whole day sleeping, so Wutai's army had at least a day's head start. If she used her lightning-speed Limit for as long as she could and spent most of the night traveling, she might be able to catch up with them. She had to stop Yinying from summoning Leviathan. She took a deep breath, focused on the dull pain in her ankle to activate her first Limit, and sped down the imperial road towards the mountains.

* * *

Godo, the rest of the Wusheng, and Wutai's army rested by day and traveled under cover of the long winter night. Late on the second night after they left Wutai, they caught sight of the looming shadow of the mountains and the numerous pinpoints of light indicating Longhua's camp.

Shake, who was leading the ninja ahead of the army to scout the area and evacuate the nearby villages, hurried towards Godo. "Sir! A Longhuan soldier was waiting just ahead. She asked me to tell you that Minazuki wants to speak with you before the battle begins."

"Tell her that I accept Minazuki's request on the condition that he comes alone," Godo responded. "I will do so too."

Shake ran off to deliver the message. A short while later, he returned to report that Minazuki had accepted Godo's terms and would descend from the mountainside to meet him. "You must know that he wants to kill you himself," Shake warned.

Staniv spoke from not far away. "Minazuki doesn't stand a chance against Wutai's strongest warrior."

"I lost that title some time ago," Godo reminded him.

In his memory he relived the hour his daughter came to fight him at the top of the Pagoda. After she ran away from home without completing her training at the dojo, Godo resigned himself to the thought that his only surviving child had abandoned her family and her people. But when she returned to challenge him at the Pagoda, he saw his own eyes—the eyes of the imperial clan, the eyes of a warrior clan—staring fiercely at him from the face that resembled her mother's. And when she defeated him and spoke passionately about Wutai, he saw for the first time that beneath her youthful stubbornness, she had a heart that burned with love for their land and a spirit to do whatever she put her mind to. So he gave her the scroll teaching her how to perform the most powerful _feng shui dao_ technique in all of Wutai, a technique that, at full strength, could conquer a god. How proud he was when his daughter came home and showed the Wusheng that she could perform the technique, even at partial strength! It was a feat no one had achieved since her mother's father.

"Miss Yuffie forfeited the title when she destroyed An-xi Square," Gorky retorted, interrupting Godo's thoughts. "You should have taken the Leviathan Materia from her. It was your right."

"The god has betrayed us," Godo said bitterly. "We can no longer call on him. He will finish Wutai when he is summoned again."

Shake returned to the front to await Minazuki's arrival. While he waited, Godo turned around to face his army. He had nothing to say to them that he hadn't said during the eight long years of war with Shinra. He used to talk about reviving the glory of the past and restoring Leviathan's honor. Such words seemed useless now.

In the distance, upon the faintly glimmering surface of the river, Godo could just make out the silhouette of a boat—not just any boat, but what Westerners called a "turtle ship" because of its armor. It drifted stealthily along the river as Wutai's army made its way south. With its hard-won cargo, it was the Wutaian army's only long-distance weapon against an army wielding guns and explosives.

When Shake returned to report that Minazuki had arrived, Godo set out to meet him. Minazuki was carrying a flashlight that sliced a white-bright path through the darkness and made it impossible to miss him.

"Forgive me for pointing out the obvious," Minazuki said, "but I think this is an appropriate metaphor for our meeting. You walked here in the dark, relying on your own eyes not to stumble on the road. But people solved the problem of walking at night a long time ago." He pointed the flashlight down the road past Godo. "You just refuse to acknowledge the solution."

When Godo didn't respond, Minazuki continued, "Your next line is, 'We were traveling at night without light because we knew you would be able to see us from the mountains if we had torches.'" He shook his head. "Again you show your ignorance. Westerners found a way to see at night without shining spotlights everywhere. It is called infrared, and it detects body heat. We saw you coming long before you arrived."

Godo remained silent yet again, prompting Minazuki to continue, "Your next line is, 'Your infrared can't detect our boat.' Actually, it can. More to the point, I'm curious to know why you brought a boat to a gun fight."

"Possibly for the same reason we both brought swords to a gun fight."

"This is no sword." Minazuki laughed. "This is what the WRO calls an EM saber. And this—all of this," he said, gesturing to the army behind him, "is how I mean to show you that all your ideas about Wutai's identity are wrong. But I came to tell you that it doesn't have to end in war. In fact, I would prefer that it didn't."

"What are your terms?"

"First, that you give your consent for the Lotus River to be dammed and a pipeline built to Longhua to end our drought. Second, that you raze the old city and build a new one like Longhua in its place."

"As to the first, I will tell you what I told you before. There is not enough water in the river for both cities. And as for the second, you may destroy the city of Wutai over my dead body."

Minazuki shook his head. "This is exactly the attitude that will be Wutai's downfall."

Picking up the slightest change in Minazuki's tone, Godo drew his _dao_ in time to block Minazuki's attack. Far behind, the scouting ninja bellowed the call to raise the shield. With a flash of reddish purple light, a bright shield appeared around Wutai's army, defending them from physical and magical harm.

Minazuki lowered his saber and stepped back to stare at the shield behind Godo. A voice spoke from a device clipped to his collar. "Sir! We're picking up mako signals from the boat."

Minazuki looked at Godo and laughed. "So you fitted the old turtle ship with Materia so anyone on deck could use any one Materia at any time. Let me guess: Chekhov and your best magic users?"

Godo responded simply, "You will not touch our city."

He drew his second _dao_ and advanced towards Minazuki. As their blades met, the sky lit up with fire: magic from Wutai's army, and gunfire from Longhua's army. Although Minazuki's soldiers gave their commander a wide berth, the ground around the two dueling men still shuddered, roared, and burst into flames. Wutai's shield held steady, only gradually weakening after a continuous barrage of gunfire, but Chekhov and her soldiers renewed the shield almost as soon as it fell.

Godo slid into the placid state of focus that was so familiar to him in a fight. For all that he was born a Prince and became Emperor, he felt most alive as a soldier. He read Minazuki's attacks easily and confidently and forced him back mercilessly. Minazuki, embarrassed at how difficult he found it to keep up, began to insult everyone related to Godo: his weak-willed father, his low-born wife, his dead sons, his useless daughter. When he finished with Godo's family, Minazuki mocked him for losing to the silver-haired soldier from the West, for making the country a caricature of its former glory, and even for fighting with the swords of a commoner. Godo never so much as flinched. The West called him the "sick man of the East"; his own people called him cursed for losing the Mandate of Heaven. No, insults could not hurt him. He had grown too used to them.

A young woman swooped into the fight, leaped off her hoverboard, and drew her saber to engage Godo. "Yvonne!" Minazuki shouted. "What are you doing here?"

The young woman was skilled, but Godo blocked her attacks easily. Without taking her eyes from the battle, she responded, "I came to help!"

"Stop! You are no match for him!"

Belatedly, Godo realized that her eyes were blue. _Minazuki had a daughter?_

Minazuki rushed back in to help her, and together the two of them faced off against Godo. "You have a job to do," Minazuki reminded his daughter.

"It can wait."

Even against the two of them, Godo easily picked up on their missteps. They weren't perfectly coordinated, allowing him to wield one _dao_ against each. When Minazuki or his daughter tried to sneak behind Godo, he could take them on with his other _dao_. Every now and then, the device on Minazuki's collar issued reports from Longhua's side. Godo barely listened, but the voices sounded urgent: Longhua had done minor damage to Wutai's army because of the shield. Wutai had managed to do more damage to Longhua. After several reports of this kind, Minazuki backed off. "It's time," he said grimly to his daughter. "We have no choice."

She glanced at her saber. A small, circular object in the hilt began to glow brilliant blue…

Minazuki was watching Godo carefully. "Where is your daughter?" he asked pointedly.

 _In prison, where I left her because I assumed the worst about her…_

He realized belatedly that Minazuki was lunging towards him to take advantage of his distraction—

At the clang of metal striking metal, Godo blinked in shock at his own daughter. With her five-point shuriken blocking Minazuki's sword and the last traces of lightning flickering away from her, Yuffie beamed at her father and said:

"Told you I didn't have the Leviathan Materia!"

She shoved Minazuki away. "How did you get out?" Godo demanded.

Yuffie laughed. "Did you really think I couldn't escape an old prison?" She looked down at his swords and frowned. "Since when did you fight with two _dao_?"

Godo didn't seem to hear her. "The room was sealed against water magic. But you didn't have the Leviathan Materia?"

"For the last time, no! But I know who does." Yuffie turned to Yinying. "Yinying, there's still time! You don't have to do this!"

"You have no right to talk!" Yinying retorted. "You were born a Princess, born your father's daughter. You see everything good about Wutai, but I see its darker side. I see a city that needs to change. And there's only one way to do that."

A blue aura of light blazed around her. She stretched a hand north, past Yuffie and Godo. Droplets of water condensed and coalesced into an enormous, luminous sphere of water. With a great crash, the sphere exploded and sent huge waves of water racing from its center. The Wutaian army's shield disintegrated. Just in time, Yuffie remembered to take a deep breath and tighten her grip on her shuriken before the waves swept her off her feet and into the icy water.

After a few moments of frantic kicking, her feet found the ground and she broke the surface, gasping. As the water receded, she looked around. Her father was not far away, leaning on his swords for support and coughing. Some distance behind, Minazuki staggered to his feet, supporting Yinying.

In the sphere's place was a serpent. It wasn't the Leviathan Yuffie remembered seeing when she first used the Materia years ago. Back then, she scoffed at the idea that the first Wutaians had cowered before a god the size of a large snake. This Leviathan had the girth of a wide river and was so long that its tail disappeared into the distance. Its turquoise scales, spines, and two long whiskers glowed and shimmered like the surface of the ocean. Its immense pearly fins, like the sails of a massive ship, billowed in the air. Its glowing eyes burned like fire through the darkness of the night. A hiss like pouring rain split the silence across the battlefield. And when the serpent opened its jaws, a long, deep bellow like the roar of a monsoon rent the icy air. All, Wutaian and Longhuan alike, were forced to clench their hands to their ears. Even with her ears shut as tightly as she could, the sound rattled Yuffie's skull. This _is the god Leviathan,_ she thought dazedly. _This is the god our ancestors met… a god that could destroy Wutai._

A wall of water began to rise in front of Leviathan. Thick bolts of lightning struck the great serpent's head: Chekhov and her warriors had recovered their senses and were trying to stop Leviathan. Despite the rapid succession of lightning spells, the god remained unscathed. Higher and higher the glowing wave rose. At last, when it reached the height of the mountains, Leviathan sent it northward, towards the city.

Yuffie snapped out of her daze. _It's now or never._ She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and focused her mind on the Materia in her shuriken. _It's time to use the power we lost. The power Longhua thought was so useless that they traded it for the Leviathan Materia._

In his peripheral vision, Godo saw a flash of yellow light. Surrounded by that brilliant light, his daughter was holding her shuriken in front of her face. Godo heard a shout from Minazuki's direction and saw him bellowing orders to his gunmen…

With the speed of lightning, he raced in front of his daughter to intercept the bullets and knocked them away with his swords. Even with his enhanced speed, the bullets were faster than he expected. He was dimly aware of his swords deforming with the stress of each impact, the growing ache in his arms and stabbing pains in his chest…

Yuffie completed the summons and opened her eyes. In front of her, her father staggered and fell to his knees, leaning on one of his swords. "Dad?" Yuffie said in confusion.

The ground lurched. Behind Leviathan, a large hill rose from the ground, shedding dirt and rocks as it heightened.

Yuffie raced forward to catch her father before he slumped to the ground. Only then did she see the bullet wounds in his chest. She gasped. "What happened?"

"Minazuki tried… to kill you," Godo answered with difficulty, wincing.

Yuffie tried to use Clear Tranquil, but her energy was exhausted from the use of the Da-chao Materia. "Why didn't you just pull me out of the way?" she demanded.

"I would have… interrupted the spell."

By the time the hill reached its full height, the earth had completely fallen away to reveal a stout, four-armed giant wearing the crown of the ancient Wutaian kings. With his characteristic serene expression, he lifted his arms. Again the ground rumbled. All on the battlefield looked north to see the earth rising. "Dad, can you see that?" Yuffie asked, shifting so that he could see. He drew a sharp breath in pain. "He's raising the city so the tsunami can't reach it."

All held their breath as the tsunami raced closer and closer. If the tsunami continued past the horizon, the city was finished; if it crashed against the rising mountain, the city was saved. At the last second, the tsunami smashed against the slope of the new mountain. Wutai's army burst into cries of relief. Yuffie heard shouts of, "Da-chao has saved the city. The Protector has saved Wutai."

"You did it," her father murmured. "I'm sorry… I doubted you."

Yuffie shook her head. "You believed in me. That's why you gave me the Leviathan Materia, right?" She turned and shouted to the nearby ninja. "Hey! Can we get a Restore Materia over here? A Revive Materia too, just in case."

Godo shook his head. "It's… no use."

"I'm not letting you die!"

"That's not… what I mean," he managed. "The curative Materia… We left them… in Wutai." When Yuffie looked at him in horror, he smiled regretfully. "It is… the way of… Leviathan. Healing… is no use. Killing… is what matters."

Suddenly, there was another long, low bellow as Leviathan whirled around to confront his ancient foe. All around, water burst from the earth in violent spurts. The reddish purple light of the shield circled around Wutai's army, this time including Yuffie and her father, to protect them from the flood. Through the shield, Yuffie saw Longhua's army fleeing to higher ground.

Leviathan turned east and whipped its tail westward. Even through the shield, the sheer movement of Leviathan's massive body sent shockwaves through the air, making Wutai's soldiers stagger. Leviathan's enormous head disappeared into the distance, and for a moment there was silence from the great serpentine body lying across the land. Then Leviathan's head reappeared from the west horizon and rested on the valley floor. There was a ripple of muscle beneath the shimmering scales, and then the earth lurched again—and began to sink.

"The prophecy," Godo whispered with difficulty. "Leviathan… is reclaiming… his kingdom…" He closed his eyes. "It is over. Wutai is finished… Leviathan has… finished us."

Yuffie squinted past the light of the shield. A yellow glow to the east told her that Da-chao was still fighting. Wutai's army was now on an island surrounded by water. _Da-chao is keeping us out of the water. The rest of the land is flooding and_ _sinking. What about Longhua's army?_ She looked south. In the darkness, it was difficult to tell.

Yuffie watched Leviathan numbly. "I tried to save Wutai. Was it really all for nothing?"

"Not… for nothing," her father said with difficulty. "You brought Da-chao… back to us. You gave us… gave _me_ … hope."

He winced and gasped in pain. "Dad, stop," Yuffie pleaded. "Save your strength."

But her father smiled weakly and reached up to touch her face. "You… really do have… your father's heart… and your mother's spirit."

Then he lowered his hand and closed his eyes. "What do you mean?" Yuffie asked. "Dad?" She shook his shoulder. "Wake up…"

In her memory, she was nine years old, shaking her father out of his sleep. Now that he was finally back from the war, she was so excited to see him, but she didn't understand why he was so unhappy. When she tried to wake him up, he muttered at her to go away. Now, as she begged him to wake up, he was silent. The ghost of a smile lingered on his pale, still face.

Against the roaring of the waves and the groaning of the earth, Yuffie heard someone screaming. At first, she thought it was her mother, screaming from the other side at the sight of her husband's bloodied, lifeless body. But she soon realized that it was a young girl screaming for her father not to leave her like her brothers and her mother—not to leave her alone.

When she opened her eyes, everything around her was flooded with violet light. It took her a moment to realize that the light was coming from her. The strength she had lost by summoning Da-chao returned to her, but with an intensity that made her feel as if fire pulsed through her veins. There was only one thing she could do with this anger.

Gently, she laid her father's body on the ground. She picked up Nemesis, turned towards the wall of the shield, and strode straight through it. The magic shield fell to pieces behind her. "Miss Yuffie!" Staniv called from behind. "What are you doing?"

"Leviathan is going to kill us all!" Yuffie shouted. "But I'm going to kill Minazuki before that happens!"

With lightning speed, she shot across the water and landed on the mountainside where Longhua's army was taking refuge from the flood. It wasn't hard to find Minazuki: he was kneeling on the ground, cradling his daughter's body. Yuffie approached him, clenching Nemesis in her hand. All of creation felt her rage. Plants around her shriveled up. The earth beneath her footsteps shuddered, cracked, and blackened. Water burst from the ground, knocking away the soldiers who tried to stand between Yuffie and Minazuki. In Yuffie's hand, Nemesis blazed with violet fire that spewed forth to create a barrier around Yuffie, Minazuki, and Yinying's lifeless body. And although she couldn't see it, Yuffie could feel the metal of all Longhua's weapons grow white-hot and melt, leaving them completely helpless. The fury of all creation lay at her disposal to end the life of the man who killed her father.

When she came to stand before Minazuki, he looked up. He was not the man she had seen just moments earlier—the man who built a modern city almost overnight, who spoke of the power of the Water God with such fire in his eyes, whose ambition was to remake Wutai into a modern world power. He was a man who had lost his future at the stopping of his daughter's heart, whose deadened eyes spoke of nothing but grief, who had no desire to fight—much less to live. And, looking at him, Yuffie knew: _He and Longhua aren't the enemy. They never were._

She turned to the north. Leviathan was still dragging the continent down. Only from this distance did she truly understand how enormous the serpent was. She imagined how the first Master of Magic must have felt when he stood on the cliffs and looked the god in the eye, the power of all creation at his fingertips…

A yellow glow from the valley floor told her Da-chao was still fighting. In the blink of an eye, Yuffie came to stand on the surface of the water beside Da-chao. "I'll help you!" she called up to him. "Let's do this!"

If he understood her or heard her, his face gave no sign. But then the earth gave a long shudder, and the enormous muscular mass of the serpentine body stiffened. Huge crystals had erupted from the ground and pierced Leviathan's scaly armor, including its jaw. That ear-shattering shriek pierced the air again, and the serpent writhed so violently that its body tore free from the crystals, leaving gaping wounds that poured blood.

Da-chao turned to Yuffie as if to say, _The rest is up to you._ She gave him a nod of thanks and narrowed her eyes at Leviathan. The world slowed to a crawl. When Yuffie released Nemesis, it drifted from her hand and began to emit a bright violet light and grow in size. She dashed forward, her huge shuriken hurtling alongside her, and flew around Leviathan. With its blazing blades and lightning-fast whirling, Nemesis sliced easily through the serpent's scaly armor. Around and around Yuffie flew, her shuriken slashing and cutting countless wounds into Leviathan's massive body. She flew to the serpent's immense head and made a chopping motion with her hand, sending the giant shuriken hurtling into Leviathan's skull.

Finally, as time sped up again, she flew back and raised her hands. As a cocoon of water encased Leviathan, blood spilled from the serpent's many wounds, staining the water red. Yuffie clenched her fists. The cocoon solidified into a single crystal of ice and shattered. It was the last straw: Leviathan's head slumped lifelessly onto the ground with its jaw hanging open. The valley was flooded with the blue-green light of Leviathan's life energy returning to the Planet.

Yuffie turned to Da-chao. "Thank you," she said. "You can go now. I'm setting you free."

The Earth God's serene expression hardly changed, but Yuffie could have sworn that his smile just slightly widened when he bowed his head to her. Then he, too, dissolved into tendrils of turquoise light as he returned to the Planet.

Yuffie staggered, barely managing to keep herself upright. She wasn't done yet. She turned to the island Da-chao had raised to protect Wutai's army from the rising floodwaters around them. Her eyes sought out the turtle ship with the Materia embedded in its hull. She sent Nemesis flying around it once. It burst into flames. With her enhanced vision, Yuffie watched each of the crewmembers leap out onto the island. When all of them were safely on shore, she sent Nemesis to circle around it repeatedly. White-hot fire engulfed the ship, incinerating the Materia.

Her strength utterly spent, Yuffie caught her shuriken and staggered back to the island. Wutai's soldiers stared at her in shock. She fell to her knees and looked up at the deep blue sky. A rosy glow from the east set the clouds afire with the light of dawn. _The last verse of the Song of the Seasons,_ Yuffie thought deliriously. _It has something to do with dawn. How does it go again?_

 _The soaring roofs are dark and bare  
_ _In the blue shadows of the evening  
_ _As I walk along the bare riverbank  
_ _Singing of the snow that falls at dawn._

The last of her strength left her and she collapsed onto the icy ground. The last thing she felt was the kiss of a snowflake on her cheek.


	12. Guardian of Wutai

Yuffie opened her eyes to a deep blue sky pierced with tree branches. When her vision gradually came into focus, she saw clusters of pale flower buds among the branches. She sat up. Before her was a river, dark blue in the dim light. Its course disappeared into mist. All around her was a fine layer of snow. Farther down the riverbank, next to a small boat resting on the shore, two people were sitting side by side: her parents.

"I told myself I would keep living," Godo was saying as Yuffie approached. "I told myself I would be the leader our people needed, the father our daughter needed. I told myself that thousands of times. And at the end of every day, I kept coming to the same conclusion: the man you loved died when he lost his wife and his country. And every day I have imagined what you would think of me if I saw you again. How ashamed you would be of the man I became."

Kasumi shook her head. "You are so hard on yourself. What happened back then was beyond our control. What matters is that even when you lost everything, even when it would have been easier to die with honor than to live in shame, you still chose to live. Because of you, Wutai survived to see a new beginning. Our people must understand that."

Yuffie stopped to watch her parents from a distance. Although her father's face still bore the weariness and melancholy he had worn ever since the end of the war, in his expression there was a tenderness that she had never seen before. Watching her parents as they looked at each other in silence, she somehow felt that she was witnessing something so powerful that she was afraid to take another step, yet so quiet that a single breath could drown it out.

Godo saw her standing nearby. "She's awake," he told Kasumi.

Yuffie's mother turned around with a smile. "You, too," she said. "I'm proud of you. Even if it didn't go the way you planned, or the way you wanted, you saved Wutai."

"I did?"

"You showed our people that they had to make peace, and that you trusted them with the future of Wutai."

"Did they really take it that way?"

"I think so. Your friend made it snow all over Wutai. I don't think it could be any clearer to our people."

"Aerith. Always stealing the show at the last second," Yuffie grumbled. "The snow was a good idea, though. I would've done it if I could do cool things like that." She sat down next to her mother and stared out at the river. "So is this heaven or something?"

"No. This is just a dream."

"A dream?" Yuffie repeated. "You mean I'm not dead? I thought All Creation at full power kills the person who uses it."

"Your friend says that the Empress of Heaven decided to save you because the Planet will need you. Someone she called 'the world's enemy' is coming back, and you're supposed to be part of the fight."

"The 'world's enemy,' huh? So… you'll be around? I'll be able to see you once in a while? Aerith can make that happen, right?"

Kasumi shook her head. "It's time for us to return to the Lifestream. Your brothers are waiting. We won't be able to see you again."

Yuffie's heart sank. "You're leaving me to lead Wutai all alone."

"You're not alone," Kasumi said gently. "You gave our people a chance to take their future into their own hands. Now it's up to you to decide what role you want to have in Wutai's future."

"You have a bright future ahead of you," Godo said. "The age of war and glory is finally over. A new age is beginning, an age of hope and rebuilding. I'm sorry that I can't be with you to see it." He hesitated. "And I'm sorry that…"

He looked away, seemingly struggling with the words he wanted to say. "I'm sorry I wasn't a better father," he said finally.

Abruptly, he stood up, walked towards the boat, and began examining it aimlessly. Kasumi stood up to follow him. " _Anata_ ," she began, as if to comfort him, but she trailed off. Yuffie knew that there was nothing her mother could say. She wasn't there when Godo refused to raise their daughter. _But he tried to make up for it,_ Yuffie realized. _He always had food waiting for me when I came home. He'd apologize when he was wrong. And in the end… he died to protect me._

She stood up to follow after him. "Dad…" She trailed off. It was her turn to struggle with the words she wanted to say. "I'll still miss you," she managed.

Her father turned around. "In the next life, be my daughter again," he urged. "Give me another chance to be the father I should have been. We will be a happy family then."

"It's a deal," Yuffie promised. "Get some rest, okay? And say hi to my brothers for me."

"I will."

Yuffie turned back to her mother. "Be my mom again so I can get to know you better. There's still a lot I don't remember about you."

Kasumi reached up to touch her daughter's face. "All you have to remember is that your mother has always loved you."

It was the touch of a ghost. Yuffie couldn't feel her mother's hand touch her cheek, but she could have sworn she felt something like a gentle breeze brush past her. Her vision blurring with tears, she watched her mother turn away and climb into the boat. "Are you ready?" Godo asked. When Kasumi nodded, he pushed the boat out into the river and leaped in. They turned to smile at Yuffie one last time. Wiping her tears, she waved to them and watched as the river gently swept them into the depths of the mist.

* * *

"Hey! She's wakin' up!"

Yuffie woke with a start. "Well, _now_ I'm awake," she muttered, glaring at Barret by her bedside.

She looked around. She was inside a large tent that looked like the ones the WRO set up as field hospitals. Many cots were filled, but the tent wasn't full and the injuries didn't look serious. She sighed in relief. Then she remembered her dream. She looked around again, searching for her father's face among the injured. _Maybe he didn't really die. Maybe he was just hurt._ But her father was nowhere to be seen.

As if he could tell what she was thinking about, Barret sighed. "Sorry 'bout your dad."

Yuffie sighed. "He didn't even _want_ to be my dad sometimes. He wished he died a hero in the war." _He died as my dad instead._

A nurse brought Yuffie a bowl of congee. Yuffie thanked her and asked Barret, "Are we in Wutai? The city, I mean?"

"Yep. Jus' outside the square. Reeve brought the WRO here 'soon as he heard the fight was over. He's waitin' for ya outside to catch ya up on what happened."

Yuffie ate quickly, struggled to her feet, and stumbled out of the tent. She squinted. The morning sun was especially bright with the snow on the ground. Shielding her eyes, she managed to find Reeve in the center of the square. Most of the debris had been sorted into large piles, making it easier to make her way to the center.

Reeve greeted her with a smile. "Glad to see you've recovered."

"How long have I been sleeping?"

"Just over a day."

"What'd I miss?"

"Not much. We've had some surveyors take a look at the land, and the entire continent sunk quite a bit. This city is fine, but Longhua underwent some flooding. They're going to need help now that they've lost their leader. They're negotiating with people from Wutai right now."

"Who?" she asked curiously. "The Wusheng?"

"No. Just… people. Some are former scholar-officials. Some are military officers. Some are just civilians. They came from all over Wutai. They said they wanted you to help as soon as you woke up, but I told them to give you some time."

"What happened to Minazuki?"

"He's still alive. He's being kept under guard. Yvonne…" Reeve trailed off. "I'm sorry. I know she was a friend of yours."

Yuffie looked down. "Yvonne wasn't bad," she said quietly. "People treated her like dirt because her mom was a _kisaeng_ and her dad wasn't around. She was right about Wutai needing to change." She looked up at Reeve again. "What else is there?"

"We're helping clean up the square. Nothing's been carted off yet. People have said they want to save the pieces so that they can rebuild."

"Rebuild?" The sheer thought of the task made her dizzy. "Rebuild all of this?"

"I know people who have reconstructed entire buildings from fragments. It can be done."

Her spirits lifted slightly. "Anything else?"

"The land outside the city has changed quite a bit. Go up to Da-chao Statue," Reeve advised. "You'll be able to see it from there."

"In a minute. Where's Minazuki?"

Reeve led Yuffie to a small tent beside the infirmary. The soldier guarding the tent stepped aside to let Yuffie in. Minazuki was sitting on the edge of his cot and staring blankly at the ground. Without looking at Yuffie, he muttered, "They say she died from extreme mental exhaustion."

"You mean Yinying."

"They say it was the strain of summoning Leviathan."

"I'm sorry," Yuffie said after a pause, not knowing else to say.

"I don't believe it!" Minazuki burst, glaring at her. "If it was mental exhaustion, why didn't you die with her? You summoned Da-chao _and_ used All Creation!"

Yuffie tried to think of something to say. "Yinying went through a lot," she said finally. "She grew up without her dad, but all she wanted was for him to accept her."

It wasn't the answer to Minazuki's question, but it had the desired effect: his anger vanished in an instant. He buried his face in his hands. "It's my fault," he mumbled. "I ordered her to take the Leviathan Materia from you. I told her to destroy Wutai. I told her that if she could do that, then she would be worthy of being my daughter. I killed her."

Yuffie watched the man who had thought only of the future grieve over the bitter irony of losing his child. _Will he ever be able to lead again?_ she wondered. _Or will he spend the rest of his life blaming himself for Yinying's death?_

She turned away and left the tent. "He didn't even apologize for killing my dad," she said bitterly when she and Reeve were out of earshot. "Didn't say a thing about him."

"I don't think even he fully understands what he's done," Reeve replied. "He needs time to reflect. I'm sure he meant well when he first became the leader of Longhua, but he became obsessed with an idea, and that obsession would have led to destruction and death. I know it came at a terrible cost, but you stopped him."

Yuffie turned towards Da-chao Statue. "I'm gonna make the climb up."

"Alright. I'll see you around."

A few steps away, she turned around again. "By the way," she called, "just a heads up. You might be getting my resignation soon."

The brief look of concern on Reeve's face turned into understanding. "I see. Let me know what you decide."

In the square, Barret called out to Yuffie from behind. She turned, and they were all there: Barret, Tifa, Cloud, Cid, Nanaki with Cait Sith on his back, and Vincent. "What're you all doing here?" she asked.

Tifa smiled. "We're here to support you."

"You're climbin' the statue, right?" Cloud asked. "We'll come with you."

Tifa walked with Yuffie along the forest path to the mountain trail. "I'm sorry to hear about your father," she said. "Are you doing okay?"

"I think so," responded Yuffie. She told Tifa about the dream, from waking up on the snowy riverbank to watching her parents disappear into the mist.

"That's beautiful," Tifa commented when she finished. "Do you think the river was the Lifestream?"

"Maybe. You think that means it was real?"

"It could be. Why not, right?"

They walked in silence until Yuffie spoke up again. "By the way, I still don't know the answer. About what it means to be Wutaian, I mean."

"I started thinking about it myself. I thought about some of the things my mom used to do: making everyone take off their shoes in the house, cooking rice for almost every meal, signing me up for piano lessons so I could play this one Wutaian song we didn't have the sheet music for… And I went to the Wutaian New Year celebrations in Edge. I don't know how to explain it, but I think I'm starting to understand."

Yuffie remembered the New Year celebrations at Icicle Inn. "Yeah. I know what you mean. You should come to Wutai more often. I'll show you everything I know about being part of this place."

"Same. Come by my bar once in a while. We can check out the Wutaian community in Edge."

Yuffie was about to ask what she could learn from the Wutaian community in Edge, but then she remembered her aunt in Icicle Inn and the café owner in Kalm. _We can't forget about Wutaians around the world,_ she thought. _We have so much to learn from each other. So many stories to share. So much hope to give._ She smiled at Tifa. "Sounds good!"

Further down the path, Cloud slowed down to walk beside Yuffie. After a few minutes of conversation, Yuffie suddenly remembered. "It's Aerith's birthday in a few days, right? This is when you usually go to the Forgotten City."

"Yeah. Good thing I went early this year."

"You said something pretty useful back there."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. You said that remembering isn't just about reliving your memories. It's also about learning from the past—"

"So that you can be a better person in the future," Cloud finished. "Yeah, that sounds familiar."

"That's actually good advice."

"Really? Care to explain?"

Yuffie told him how her memory of the ancient legend about the first _feng shui_ warriors gave her the idea to use her final Limit to defeat Leviathan. "So you have both Materia now?" Cloud asked when she finished.

"Nope. They're gone. Along with all the Materia Wutai brought to the battlefield."

"Really? You destroyed it all? You didn't think they'd come in handy one day?"

She shook her head. "After all this? We're probably better off without 'em."

Cloud laughed. "Yuffie Kisaragi giving up Materia? It must be the end of an era."

Yuffie rolled her eyes. "That's getting really old!"

When they reached the foot of the mountain, they came across Cid taking a break to have a smoke. "Put that out," Yuffie ordered him. "This's clean Wutaian air."

"Who're you, the queen o' Wutai?" he grumbled, but dropped the cigarette and stamped it out. When Yuffie cleared her throat, he stooped down to pick up the cigarette and stuff it in his pocket.

"You're not supposed to smoke anyway," she pointed out. "Didn't Shera tell you it's bad for your kid?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm workin' on it," he muttered.

They began the trek up the mountain trail. "By the way, I _am_ the queen of Wutai," Yuffie told him.

"'Zat right?"

"No. I just wanted to see how it sounded. But I don't think I can be what my dad was," Yuffie admitted. "You know? There're some things you can't bring back from the past. And Reeve said the people are learning how to lead themselves. But I want to lead, even if I'm not the Empress or anything." _After everything I've been through, everything I've seen and learned, everything I remember, how can I not help lead Wutai in some way?_

Warm air enveloped them when they entered the fiery caverns leading them higher up the mountain. Yuffie soon caught up to Vincent, but he didn't seem to be in the mood for conversation and walked by her side in silence. But when they emerged in the daylight, Vincent stopped Yuffie and stared into her eyes. "What?" she asked.

"Your eyes."

"What about 'em?"

"They're brown. And violet."

"Both?" Vincent nodded. Yuffie held out her hand. "Can I see your phone?"

"No."

"Mine doesn't work anymore 'cause it got wet."

Reluctantly, Vincent gave her his phone. She peered at her reflection and saw that it was true: her eyes, whose color she had never been able to tell for herself, were dark brown with violet rings around the irises. She made a face and handed Vincent's phone back to him. "It's weird," she complained.

"I think it's nice."

She stared at him as he promptly walked away. "You do?" she called after him. He didn't respond.

When they reached the lookout, Yuffie ran to the edge. The city had once sat between the forests and the fields of the Lotus River valley. Now it perched on the edge of a vast sapphire lake reaching from the city gates to the mountains in the south. On the east and west horizons, the lake was bounded by more mountains. If she squinted, Yuffie could see the island Da-chao had raised to save Wutai's army when the valley flooded.

Nanaki came up next to her. "Ever seen a lake this big?" Yuffie asked him, awestruck. "It almost looks like an ocean."

 _Water destroys, like Minazuki said._ _But water is also life. It doesn't have to divide us. Maybe it can bring us together._

"Do you still want to build a train from here to Longhua?" Nanaki asked teasingly.

"Not a train. A canal." She pointed. "The farmers need to drain some of the water to get their farmland back. And Longhua still needs water."

"Are you worried they'll pollute it like they did to East Lake?"

"I think they've learned their lesson." A plan came together in her head. "The canal can connect the towns along the old road. Traveling up and down Wutai will be a lot easier than before."

"Who will build it?"

"We will," she answered simply. "We built canals hundreds of years ago. We can get Longhua's engineers to help too. And maybe the WRO can give us a hand."

The eight of them stood together in silent awe of the new landscape. _It ain't what it used to be,_ Yuffie thought, _but it's still home._

"Cid?" she called. "I think I know what I wanna be. Guardian of Wutai."

 _I won't take Dad's place on the throne. I'll take his place at the top of the Pagoda. We'll rebuild it, but it won't be used the same way as before. That Pagoda was for preparing Wutai for the wars that ended it. The new Pagoda of Martial Might will just be for teaching martial arts. We'll do the same for the Pavilion of Heavenly Harmony and the Palace of Earthly Peace. They won't be used for praying for victory in war, or showing off the imperial family's wealth. They'll be used for celebrating the yearly festivals and housing the new government. Mom and Dad will see from the other side, and Wutaians all over the world will know: Wutai still lives._

Yuffie reached into her pocket and found her mother's hairpin still there. She gazed at the phoenix shining in the sunlight. _In Wutai, the phoenix is the sign of the Empress. In the West, it's a sign of rebirth. I wonder if Mom knew that._

Thinking of her mother from the heights of Da-chao Statue brought back a long-forgotten memory: she was little, sitting in her mother's lap and wrapped warmly in her arms, as they sang her favorite lullaby and watched the plum blossoms bloom. Now the roofs were covered with snow, just like the first verse of the lullaby.

 _How does it go again?_ Yuffie hummed the melody and the words came back to her. She began to sing, her voice ringing clearly in the crisp air of the early spring:

 _The soaring roofs are pale with snow  
_ _Gleaming bright blue in the light of dawn  
_ _As I walk along the white riverbank  
_ _Singing of spring mornings._

* * *

The End

* * *

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the inspiration for this story:

 _The Joy Luck Club_ with its poignant stories about Chinese women and their second-generation daughters; _Princess Mononoke_ with its deep roots in Japanese mythology, its complex conflict, and its powerful, bittersweet ending; and _Kubo and the Two Strings_ with its rich soundtrack and its story about a boy learning who his parents are and discovering the power of memory.

Jasmine Chen's beautiful rendition of the Northeastern Cradle Song inspired the Song of the Seasons.

Addenda

Although I tried to make the story as consistent with canon as possible, there's so much material in the Compilation that it's too difficult to keep up, and there were certain things I wanted to change for the story I wanted to tell, which was the story of the end of an Empire and the fate of its last Princess. Departures (i.e. direct contradictions) with canon are noted here:

In canon, Wutai went to war with Shinra over a mako reactor. I added that Shinra was also involved in an incident leading to the death of Wutai's Prince.

In canon, Zack ended the war by capturing a single fortress. In my story, the war ended with Shinra bombing part of the city of Wutai and Godo losing to Sephiroth in a duel. Even though these two events are only mentioned once and don't really affect the plot, they are important for the overall narrative.

The city of Wutai and its monuments are described differently from what the game shows. I used ancient Chinese cities and monuments for reference.

Since _Dirge of Cerberus_ took liberties with Vincent's Limits, I took some liberties with Yuffie's. This story's Gauntlet, Doom of the Living, and (part of) All Creation are based on Yuffie's Soul Breaks in _Final Fantasy Record Keeper_.

The original Japanese name of Yuffie's final weapon (officially translated "Conformer"), more closely means "archenemy," so I renamed it "Nemesis." (This also makes it deliciously ironic that Yuffie uses it to end the war.)

Square named Godo to refer to _Waiting for Godot_. I turned it into a short version of a number-related name, Juugodou.

Canon implies that the whole world speaks the same language. I made Wutaian a separate language. But according to my unofficial history of Wutai, the country wasn't completely isolated from the world, so even before the war, children of wealthy families, including Yuffie, learned "English" at an early age.

In the original game, the Pagoda Masters' battle styles don't correspond with their titles. I changed the Masters' abilities so that they would be consistent with their titles. Chekhov is an exception: I decided that the Master of Magic is a master of both Materia and Limits.

In the original game, Godo fights with a _dao_ and a little trident thing. I made him fight with two _dao_ because I thought it was cooler. I also left out his omni-change form for various reasons that are too long to write.

Bonus: There are many references to an in-progress story about Godo and Kasumi. About half done, it is already more than 20,000 words longer than this story, and I'm not convinced that it's interesting enough to justify the length. If I decide to publish it, all chapters will probably be published in fall 2019.

Bonus 2: There are some references to another prequel involving Cid: Yuffie's complaint that Cid "got high and mighty ever since he saved the world from some measly dragons," and Cid's baby with Shera. I have a brief synopsis in mind, but at the moment it's highly unlikely that I'll write it.

Closing

My thanks to the people who inspired this story:

First, my parents: my mother, whose story inspired Kasumi and Yuffie's journeys and whose storytelling voice would always bring me back to my childhood; and my father, whom I didn't understand until I learned about the world he grew up in and the struggles he faced.

Second, my childhood friends, whose struggles with ethnic identity, heritage, and parental relationships lead us all to a better understanding of who we are, where we came from, and what we can do to foster a multicultural society.

Third, A.V., R.E., and S.Y., whose discussions on tradition and cultural identity were indispensable to the development of this story's themes.

Fourth, the people I encountered at the Obon Festival in my hometown, who showed me how tradition lives on even across oceans.

And last but not least, thanks to my readers for following the story all the way to the end. Even if there is only one of you, you have my profound gratitude. Whatever your ethnic or cultural background, I hope you have found something valuable in the story. If you have, then this story was worth the effort.


End file.
